Work Text:
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1
“The wider side goes to the right,” Mama says, tugging on each side of the tie to demonstrate her point. Izuku nods miserably, albeit craning his eyes to watch what she’s doing as she sticks out her tongue and squints to focus on the offending article—which is only Izuku’s little tie the same shade of red as his new, extra wide shoes. By the way she’s looking at it, you’d think it was his math homework. “Then, cross the wider side over the smaller side…loop underneath…and then a-across…um, and then the wide part goes through this loop here.” Mama’s index finger taps against the loop she’s apparently talking about with a glance toward Izuku to make sure he understands; he can’t see the loop, or what she’s doing, but he nods anyway, and she continues. “The big part goes through the knot we made here, with the middle and the skinny part, and then you just tug, tug, until it’s nice and snug. And make sure it’s even here on the ends.”
Izuku grunts as the tie gets tighter around his neck, almost uncomfortably tight, but it must look nice enough because Inko grins and pats him on his skinny shoulders after folding down the collar of his shirt. It’s his least favorite shirt—he used to like it, but Kacchan once said he looked goofy in it after he wore it to school, so now he doesn’t like it so much—but Mama said it was the only one that would work for tonight's dinner…thing.
No, his Wild Wild Pussycats shirt definitely wouldn’t do, and neither would his All Might shirt.
It must be something real fancy, in that case. So, the scratchy button-up it was. And the tie, too, as much as he protested it (he’d never fought something so hard, and he’d even employed some tactics he’d seen in the hero fights on the news, but to no avail. He’ll have to study those fights a little harder before becoming a hero, or make up his own moves. Yeah, his own moves would be cool and better, and they’d keep him from having to wear a dumb, too-tight tie).
Izuku digs a finger into the top of his collar with a huff, half-glowering at the floor just beyond his socked toes, but Mama wraps two fingers around his knobbly wrist and pulls him away, tutting, so he stops messing with it and instead full-glowers at the floor beyond his socked toes. Mama kneels in his peripherals, her pretty green dress pulled over her knees and her bracelets jingling on her wrists like her own personal orchestra, but Izuku keeps his gaze fixed. He won’t be swayed; he is going to stay mad about this whole tie situation, probably forever. Or, at least until she teaches him to take this stupid thing off .
“Izuku,” Mama starts, sounding worried and serious enough to have Izuku’s eyes darting away from the floor to meet her gaze, glowering long forgotten. “Izuku, baby, you know I’ll always love you. Mama will always, always be in your corner, no matter what.”
“Of course!” Izuku answers, even though she hadn’t asked a question. His English teacher would call this a rhetorical situation, and as of recently, he would smack the backs of Izuku’s hands with a ruler just for talking out during a rhetorical situation like this. Instead, Mama cups Izuku’s little hands in her own. He resists the urge to pull away.
“But other people aren’t always going to be so kind to you. A-anymore. I guess.” She laughs awkwardly at her fumble, glancing off to the side. Izuku thinks she looks very nice in her fancy makeup; there are smudges of green and gold around her eyes, just like the colors on her dress, and it’s really very nice. Pretty. He bites the corner of his lip to keep from bursting out and saying that because he thinks that she probably has something important to say if she won’t look at him anymore.
Something inside him, under where the tie lays against his sternum, withers with dread as Mama collects herself. He’s shivery—but not cold—in the same way he was in that doctor’s office a few weeks ago.
“When we go to this dinner, it’s for Mama’s work, okay? And no one at Mama’s work knows about what the doctor told us when we talked to him—not because…not because I’m ashamed, Izuku, but because they won’t be very nice to you if they know about it.” Izuku furrows his brows and wrinkles his nose. Why would he ever assume Mama is ashamed? Obviously she’s not ashamed of him—he can’t think of a reason why she would be, at least.
“Okay, Mama,” Izuku tells her. He nods. Her hands tighten around his hands, and it almost hurts, but he doesn’t bother saying anything about it, even though her hold makes the ruler-hurts sting all over again.
“That means you can’t tell them about what the doctor told us, okay? Or they won’t be very nice to you. Or to me, either, probably, and that’s what I’m worried about. If the people at dinner find out that you’re—that you don’t—about what the doctor told us, they might make Mama find a new job.”
“If they’re not-nice, then why is that so bad?” Izuku asks, scrunching up his nose again and shifting his weight between his feet. “Why do you want to work with not-nice people?”
“They aren’t bad people, baby. They just…I really, really like this job, all right? Plus, if they make me look for a new job, I might not be able to find another one around here. We might have to move.” Mama observes him for a while, running her eyes over his pudgy, young face as he worries his lower lip between his teeth. “We’ll have to move away, and you won’t be able to play with little Katsuki anymore, and you’ll have to go to a new school and make new friends.”
Izuku doesn’t tell her that he and Kacchan barely play together anymore, and he doesn’t have friends at this school.
Still, he nods.
“Okay, Mama,” he murmurs. “I won’t tell.”
Her face breaks out in a wide grin, her lips outlined in a glossy lipstick-or-something. Even through his swimming tears, Izuku still thinks she looks nice. She tugs gently on his tie.
“My little Izuku—all grown up, right before my eyes. I bet you won’t even need my help the next time you have to wear a tie.”
—
2
Izuku sniffles and watches the moths swarm under the streetlamp across the street. They bob and jolt and buzz and fight for the space closest to the lightbulb, and if not for the music coming from inside the school, he might be able to hear them knocking against the glass.
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Not. Not who? Not Deku, who is covered in mud and shivering outside the school dance like a total loser. Definitely not him.
He hadn’t even made it inside to the formal. Izuku had been so careful on the walk over from his apartment, making sure that he walked straight and even, so he didn’t wrinkle his pants, keeping his hands at his side so his jacket didn’t get all bunched up at the elbows. He imagined himself walking next to All Might at a hero gala, his back straight and his cheeks stretched around a big, reassuring smile. They’d be prim and proper and fancy, and everyone in the audience would be cheering and clapping for them, Izuku and All Might.
All Right and All Might? Small Might and All Might? Izuku’s hero name was still a work in progress, obviously, but whatever it ended up being, the crowds would be cheering it, that was for sure. The thought warmed him, despite the chilly March-night air, and he stood a little taller, smiling to himself. All Might always said you had to be your own biggest supporter, and that thought kept Izuku going in pursuing his dream of being a hero because, really, he was his only supporter and therefore his biggest one. This is why people call Izuku an optimist—well, people call him useless and Deku, but he calls himself an optimist.
Life and lemons and all that, he supposes.
Well, despite being an optimist, Izuku is also not stupid. He’d been sure to make an airtight, thorough pros and cons list for this formal before making his decision on whether or not to attend.
Cons: loud music, music he doesn’t even like, uncomfortable clothes, he doesn’t like dancing, who would he talk to?, who are the chaperones?, who else in his class is going?, is Kacchan going?, Kacchan, his goonies, and their whole class stuck together in a crowded, dark room where they can easily evade the chaperones if they really wanted to, a few of his smarter classmates might catch onto the idea that they can play off knocking him over as bad, overzealous dancing, and really, the list went on. For a full page in his notebook.
Pros: ???
And if there was one thing Izuku hated, it was leaving an unknown fact in his notebooks. It was why he’d gotten in trouble so many times for getting to close to villain fights or trying to intercept heroes during interviews to answer his own burning questions, instead of the important ones like Ectoplasm, about how many of your clones would it take to lift a bus? The answer to that one was obvious, Izuku thought with an eye roll, so why bother asking it?
This hatred for burning questions and unknowns is exactly why Izuku ignored every single con on his page-long list, adorned one of his fathers old, dusty and ill-fitting suits that got left behind when he left, and ended up on his way to the formal. At least he managed to save up for an All Might tie to wear; it makes it less miserable, even though he couldn’t quite manage tying it on his own, and it’s lopsided and clumsy. The skinny end is longer than the wide end, and the knot rests somewhere between his second and third ribs. He’d taken one look at himself in the mirror before leaving—he’d attempted to gel back his hair like they do for dances in the movies, but some of his curls stick straight out from his head, crunchy and dull from the gel, the shoulders of the suit made him look scrawnier than he already was, his tie barely looked like a tie anymore, and his red shoes clashed with the vomit-yellow, unthinkably itchy tweed of the suit—and huffed at himself.
He should just stay home. Screw the dance, screw his pros and cons list.
He made sure to lock the door behind him on his way out.
It would be fun, once he got there, he was sure. Maybe in the dark and in the flashing lights, the disorientingly loud music, someone would mistake him for someone else and dance with him, and then they’d realize how fun he was despite his affliction (it wasn’t a disease, it wasn’t catching, so why did everyone talking about his Quirklessness like that?) and be friends with him even after the song ended and the lights came back on. Or, at the very least, they’d nod in greeting while passing him in the hallway on Monday.
A kid can dream, right?
Izuku smiles softly to himself and promptly catches a mouthful of slimy, cold mud. It catches between his teeth, runs over his tongue like a slug, and he gags on it, spluttering as he struggles to free himself from the puddle.
Behind him, a few of his classmates (or maybe they’re some upperclassmen? Maybe underclassmen, he can’t tell through the mud caked in his eyelashes like big, fat spiders frozen in their web) laugh so hard their blurry forms clutch at each other, at their stomachs, one is on its knees at Izuku’s feet. They only laugh harder as he drools out his mouthful of mud.
“Useless loser can’t even keep himself on his feet,” one howls, pointing at Izuku where he is half-prostrate in the thick mud next to the sidewalk outside the school.
“God, look at him!”
A few students snicker as they pass, jogging up the stairs and disappearing through the entrance. Izuku’s skull vibrates with the music coming from inside and from the laughter that surrounds him.
Nearby, he hears a car door slam closed, and he flinches at the impact of it despite the distance.
“Old hag, leave me alone!” echoes a familiar voice from across the school parking lot. “Why’d you have to all of a sudden want to be so far up my ass you end up at my dance, huh?”
“Oh, shit,” one of the kids looming over Izuku mutters. “Chaperone.” And the three kids scramble into the anonymity and safety of the school.
“Katsuki!” Izuku hears, again from the other side of the parking lot. This time, it’s not Kacchan’s voice but Auntie Mitsuki’s. Izuku sighs to himself and half crab walks his way out of the mud puddle, squelching grossly with every movement.
“Ugh,” he grunts to himself, wiping off what he can with his mud-covered hands. The cold of it seeps through his suit jacket and his t-shirt to his skin, spreading goosebumps over every inch of his body as he sits there, soiled and adding another page of cons to his mental copy of his notebook. This is exactly how he ends up sitting on the sidewalk outside the school dance, watching the moths and waiting for he doesn’t know what.
Maybe he’s just waiting for the energy to get up and start the long walk home. For another moment, it doesn’t come, and for another moment, he sits there. Watching, waiting, covered in mud. Now, there is no chance of him going inside and making an anonymous, maybe-lasting friend because surely the whole school knows, by now, that he will be the stranger in the dark who smells like mud and despair.
Izuku chokes out a laugh to himself at the thought.
“Izuku?”
He startles and flits his eyes upward , meeting the gaze of Auntie Mitsuki for a split second before her eyes start looking too much like Kacchan’s, and he has to look away again. He’s glad it wasn’t Kacchan who pushed him in the mud, at least. Now, that would have been a low blow.
Kacchan would never stoop so low as to do something like that. Izuku doesn’t have it in him to be proven wrong on that front.
“Hi, Auntie. How are you? You’re a chaperone?” He winces at the stupid question; recently, his teachers have started giving him detentions for asking stupid questions. Or any questions. He hasn’t gotten out of school on time in months.
“I am, and I can tell you it’s much more fun inside than sitting out here all alone. What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be inside, dancing the night away with your friends? Or maybe there’s a girl in there who’s caught your fancy, and you’re too nervous to ask her to a dance, hm?” Auntie Mitsuki chuckles to herself and crouches to his level. It’s dark enough where they are that she probably can’t tell that he’s sitting in his own puddle of wet earth, but he has to bite his lip to keep from laughing at her questions.
What friends? he wants to say, and why bother asking if you know any girl on Earth would reject you?
He doesn’t say either of those things. It’s not hero-like to be self-deprecating.
“I’m…just not ready to go in yet, Auntie.” Izuku shrugs one shoulder and lets it drop, bowing his head to avoid her searching, red eyes.
“How long have you been sitting out here, waiting to be ready, Izuku?” she asks, earning a wince from him.
“Uh.”
“All right, that’s enough of that, then,” she declares, standing from her crouch and brushing off invisible dust from her dress pants. Auntie Mitsuki holds out a hand in his direction. “We’re going in there, and all those little motherfuckers—sorry, I mean, all those kids in there are gonna see that you have the coolest chaperone of them all on your arm, and they’re all gonna be damn jealous of you, all right?” She wiggles her fingers when Izuku fails to take her hand, and he tries to wipe off the mud caked to his palm on his pants, then on the grass when he remembers that his pants are worse off than his hands. He stares down at his hands, then up at her, and he shakes his head, vehement.
“I can’t. I can’t go in there, Auntie,” he tells her, almost pleading.
“Well, why not?”
“I—I didn’t tie my tie right. It looks funny. I should probably just go home, you know—” Izuku scrambles to get up and brush past her, somehow without getting her dirty, he really hadn’t thought that far ahead, but Auntie’s hands end up at his tie without him noticing.
At the feeling of the crusting mud drying on his tie, she recoils. Izuku inhales sharply through his nose and cradles his hands to his chest like she’d burned him, even though Kacchan is the one with the burning palms, not her, and she wouldn’t do that to him in a million years. Probably.
“Is that…are you…covered in mud ?” Auntie asks, blinking rapidly as she wipes her hand on the front of her pants. He opens his mouth, trying to warn her that she’ll get dirty if she does that any more, but he thinks better of it. She more than likely already knows.
“Um.” Izuku glances over his shoulder at the offending mud puddle with its Izuku-imprint. “Yes.”
“Ah. Well, I see.” She mutters something that sounds like Midoriya’s are so damn clumsy , and he doesn’t bother correcting her. “Stand still, then, and let me get that tie fixed for you, kid.”
Again, her hands descend upon the clunky knot he’d tied, making quick work of it even while he wriggles against her hold.
“Katsuki was just as squirmy—shit, kid—and just as bad at tying his own tie. Of course, that was when he was younger, I’m sure he would’ve chopped my hands off if I tried to help him get ready for tonight, the little brat. Now, stand still,” Auntie demands, flicking his tie this way and that before somehow making a neat, professional knot out of it, this one resting just over his collarbones.
“There you go. Good as new.” She pats him on the head, the gel crunching a little under her touch, and she grimaces.
“I still…I think I’ll just go home now, Auntie,” Izuku confesses. He doesn’t look her in the eye. “Thanks, though.”
“Hey, kid, you still wanna be a hero like my little brat?” Auntie asks, sounding genuine and less mocking than he’s heard from anyone in years when referring to his dream. He eyes her through his eyelashes and digs the toe of his shoe into the grass, waiting for an opportunity to dart away. “Well, real heroes wear proper ties, so you’d better learn to tie one soon.”
She shoots him a grin before disappearing back inside the school. Izuku tugs on the knot of his tie, biting back a grin.
—
3
Izuku stares himself down in the mirror. He drags his fingers over his gaunt, waxy cheeks, his dirty, bitten fingernails brushing the underside of his dark circles, which are so purple they might as well be the color of a starless sky after midnight in the countryside, a sight he only saw a few times during his stint as a vigilante.
Because that’s what they’re all calling it. His stint as a vigilante. He doesn’t feel like a vigilante; as a kid, the word made him think of heroes moving in the dark, totally cool and level-headed and always victorious, saving the people who needed saving when the limelight heroes were tucked away in bed. That’s not what he did. He was a coward, not cool or level-headed, he was running away. From everything, from everyone, and it got him nowhere.
Everyone he was scared of hurting, of getting killed—they all got hurt, and they all died anyway. That blood is on his hands and his hands alone, especially with Shigaraki locked away and all threatening resurgences getting stomped out across the world.
Izuku’s reflection’s shoulders are slumped and weak. A new scar runs from the underside of his jaw to the outside of his right bicep, slicing some of his freckles in halves or in quarters, an ugly forever-reminder of all of his fumbles. As if his arms weren’t enough; he hasn’t worn short sleeves in weeks, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to again. The sight of his arms makes him nauseous; just the thought of them has his stomach rolling, clenching, caving in on itself.
Has he eaten today? God, he can’t remember. He tugs at his collar, but he must be more out of it than he thought because he forgets to keep a handle on his strength and accidentally rips his lopsided tie in half in his attempt to get free of the restricting clothes.
It’s not like he’d tied it correctly in the first place, but as it flutters to the ground at his feet in two pieces, he can’t help but close his eyes, his fingers weaving into his hair and tugging hard enough to make his scalp sting. His throat bobs, stuck around a lump, but his eyes are so dry they ache with it.
Izuku wishes he could cry. Or, maybe he doesn’t; he might never be able to stop, not with the lifetime of grief he’s paved for himself in the last few weeks. Kacchan always called him a crybaby, but now Kacchan is in the medical wing, has been since that fight against Shigaraki at the end of it all, still recovering—he can barely stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time, and Izuku has barely been by to visit him because he’s the worst , and he can’t handle it. He is weak. A coward. It’s a wonder he didn’t die in the war. Sometimes, he thinks—
He got through an entire war, and this is the thing he can’t handle. Kacchan laid up in bed; having to wake up every day and get out of bed; this stupid awards ceremony everyone from the class who is currently conscious is required to go to. For recognition.
Fuck recognition.
This shirt is too loose, since Izuku lost so much weight during his stint and because he probably hasn’t been eating enough since he got back, or since the war ended, or maybe ever, but he hasn’t had time to go out and buy new shirts, not between fighting and running and trying to keep going despite everything. Still, this one rubs against his bandages and bruises and hurts in all the wrong ways, and he wants to rip it off, but there is nothing else for him to wear if he pulls something stupid like that. All of his other collared shirts are dirty, each of them having been worn to different funerals and memorials this week.
Izuku punches the mirror, square in the nose of his reflection. It shatters into a spiderweb of pieces around his fist, several shards making a home in the split, calloused skin of his scarred knuckles, and the impact reverberates painfully up his sore arm, through his shoulder, up his neck, into his very being. Still, he doesn’t cry, barely reacts.
“Shit,” he mutters to himself, pulling his arm away from the broken mirror frame and observing it under a cold, calculating gaze. He’ll have to pay the school for a replacement. He wonders how much it’ll be, and he doesn’t even consider going to Recovery Girl. With his other hand, Izuku runs his finger over his bloodied knuckles with a hiss. The glass stings, but it’s a distant feeling, almost not even there. He’s had worse, and that was just in middle school.
Izuku, bizarrely, has to bite back a laugh. It bubbles up from somewhere tucked behind his lungs, loud and shaking, and it confuses him so much that even as his shoulders shake with the force of his laughter, his brows are furrowed and blood wells up from just under his skin, bright red against the dull pallor of his body.
“You okay—kid, Jesus,” Aizawa grunts from the doorway of the tiled communal bathroom. His eye is wide, the other hidden behind a black patch, which is barely discernible behind his shaggy hair. Still, Izuku is laughing. He clutches at the edge of the sink and kneels to keep himself from keeling over then and there in the bathroom with his teacher watching and his tie ripped in half and abandoned at his feet.
Aizawa shuffles in, still awkward on his crutches and awaiting a prosthetic—they’re in short supply in the wake of…everything. The thought makes Izuku laugh harder. His eyes are squinted shut, and if he doesn’t get a hold on himself, he’s going to crack the porcelain sink or throw up. Or both. His ribs ache, from laughing or from fighting—probably also both.
“Aizawa-san,” he manages between peels of his own lunacy.
“Kid, what the hell happened?”
“I punched the mirror. I can’t stop. I’m going to die.” So quickly he hardly noticed, Izuku’s laughing turned to hyperventilating, and he ends up on his ass, mostly tucked under the sink and still dry-eyed.
Aizawa’s crutches clatter to the ground as he collapses in a heap in front of Izuku, his eye desperate, confused, worried. The man was hard to read before, but now, it’s impossible. Izuku clutches at the front of his baggy, black shirt and heaves for a breath but can’t manage it around his unidentifiable panic; the tightness of his hold as blood trailing toward his forearms.
“Come on, kid. Breathe,” Aizawa mutters, his hand curling into the back of Izuku’s dress shirt with just as tight of a hold. They’ll disappear if they let go, Izuku is sure, and he shudders around a half-breath that hiccups in the back of his throat.
“I can’t do this, Aizawa-san,” he sobs, curling over himself. “I-I don’t—they’re going to give us medals? For what? For getting everyone else killed? Half the city is leveled, still smoking, there are fires they’re still putting out, Aizawa-san, and here we are, getting a shiny trophy, and—and everyone is dead or dying, and Kacchan is so—he’s so tired, so tired, and I can’t visit him, please , oh my god, please,” he sobs without tears, delirious with it all. “I’ve been to too many funerals, and I should’ve lost. I should’ve lost to Sh-Sh—I mean, I shouldn’t have won. And a medal? And a ceremony? For fucking what ?”
By now, some of his classmates, his only surviving allies (for how long? How long before he gets them killed, too?), have gathered at the mouth of the bathroom, gaping at Izuku’s fall from not-quite-grace.
“M—Izuku,” Aizawa stumbles, fingers twitching against Izuku’s back.
“I can’t—I can’t, I can’t ,” Izuku insists. He knocks his forehead into the tiled floor, and it doesn’t hurt, not even close, but Aizawa still forces his free hand between Izuku and the solid ground and keeps it there even when Izuku keens like a little kid.
“You can. They’re giving out medals because you were brave. So brave, kid. You saved—everyone.” Aizawa huffs out a laugh. Izuku shakes his head against Aizawa’s palm, clenching his eyes closed. “Yes, you did. If not for you, your classmates would have died. Every last one of them. But look—they’re there.” Aizawa nudges him with his fingertips, and Izuku turns and blinks slowly at the throng of them in the doorway of the bathroom, all of them looking worn down and worried. But not terrorized, like he’s so used to seeing them lately.
Just normal-worried.
“That’s what this medal is for. Because of you, so many people are still around, still breathing and getting through another day. You were so brave. You were so strong, kid, and I am proud of you. So proud.” Aizawa peters off into a murmur by the end of his speech, and it’s just for the two of them, and something goes out of Izuku at that.
He draws in a breath. Loosens his hold on his teacher. Winces at the blood staining the sleeve of his shirt and wipes his clean hand over his dry face. He feels like crumbling wax, but Aizawa holds him together.
Izuku nods once, then again, and Aizawa nods back, humming in confirmation even though no one has said anything in a long, stretching second.
“Okay,” Izuku says finally, letting out a long breath that is hot on his chapped lips.
“Iida, go find me a new dress shirt and tie for Midoriya,” Aizawa requests without looking at his other students. Izuku hears the telltale sound of an engine puff and a rapid pair of footsteps receding, and it’s so normal, so typical, that it almost makes Izuku laugh again. He holds it in until the feeling washes away, replaced with total exhaustion. “Everyone else, go mind your business. I’ll come get you from the common room when it’s time to go.”
And then it’s just Izuku and Aizawa in the bathroom, and neither of them talk. They breathe, Izuku’s heart throbbing in his ears and in his temples, behind his eyes, and his mouth is dry, but he doesn’t have it in him to move from where he is crumpled in a heap on the ground.
Iida returns, places a neatly folded, pressed white button-up and a black tie on the ground next to Aizawa’s crutches before he, too, disappears from the bathroom.
“Come on, sit up. You’re going to have to help me up off this ground, kid,” Aizawa says apologetically. Izuku wraps an arm around Aizawa and lifts him with a grunt, and together, they stumble toward one of the nearby benches.
Aizawa helps Izuku out of his bloodied shirt, cleans and wraps his knuckles, and into the new shirt all without speaking. Izuku watches it all happen, detached and blinking slowly.
“I don’t deserve this, Aizawa-san,” Izuku murmurs into the quiet they’ve created. He leans forward, pressing the top of his head into Aizawa’s sternum. A hand wraps around his head and holds him close.
Izuku’s not sure what he even means—Aizawa’s kindness, his gentleness, the award, the victory, the living ? Aizawa doesn’t ask.
“Yes, you do,” he says anyway, and he sounds so sure of himself that Izuku can only nod. “Now, let me do your tie, kid.”
—
4
“It’s over…then under…or—shit,” Izuku mutters to himself, hands fluttering uselessly around his unsuccessful Windsor knot. He’s not sure it even counts as a knot, with how it sort of lists to one side and is bigger around than Eri’s fist, and it’s not doing its job of tying anything together in the slightest.
Izuku huffs and pulls it off, leaving his collar popped. He leaves the fabric of his tie draped between his two hands, one of which is scarred all over and perpetually shakier than any other part of his body, but it’s been years of getting used to that, and it doesn’t bother him so much anymore.
He’s got other, newer scars, of course. Three years in the top hero school in the country will do that to a kid, especially a top hero school as brutal as U.A. There’s one across his thigh from the one time Shinsou managed to clip him with the metal-sharp edge of his capture scarf, which at the time was nothing more than a glorified papercut but left a purple-red mark to match the rest of Izuku’s body. His nose is more crooked in his last yearbook photo, the one from a few months ago where he is smiling wider than he’s smiled in any other photo probably ever, than it was in his first yearbook photo taken at U.A., but everything is a little different from how it was back then.
His graduating class, 3-A, is only seventeen people. Mineta’s seat switched out for Shinsou’s after the war, Aoyama’s left empty, another seat vacated not long after the war ended, not to be filled again for the remaining two years. It makes sense; no one else in the entire school, maybe the entirety of Japan, would understand what all of them went through during their first year. They’d all sort of closed themselves off, into one big heap of emotionally, physically, fucked-up kids.
It worked for them. Izuku wouldn’t trade in his class for anything . Sappily, Izuku’s eyes water—he loves them, he really does. Every last one of his classmates, he loves them.
Well, they won’t be classmates for much longer. In about six hours, they’ll be colleagues, members of the work force—real, actual heroes with diplomas to match their hero licenses. Weird. Izuku chuckles to himself at the thought, still running his thumbs over his tie. Everything they’ve worked for, it all comes to fruition today and for the rest of their lives.
And he still doesn’t know how to tie his own tie, no matter how many times literally everyone around him has tried to teach him.
Any other day, he might berate himself for it, his inability and his clumsy hands, but today, he can only grin to himself; all the things he’s learned and done in the past three years, and he can’t do something so simple. They’re still going to give him his diploma, though, so it must not matter too much.
“Young Midoriya,” Toshinori booms from the open doorway of Izuku’s dorm. For a moment, Yagi keeps the pretense of boisterous heroism, as always—his signature, toothy smile, eyes scrunched closed, back straightened, hands on his hips, skinny chest puffed out like he still has his build from when he was young—but it drops a moment later, replaced with a soft, proud smile and a shortening slouch. “My boy.”
“Toshinori, hi!” Izuku greet, setting his tie on the corner of his desk and turning to face his mentor fully.
“How are you feeling? Excited? Nervous? I remember my graduation from U.A., not much has changed, really.” Toshinori laughs to himself, a rumbling chuckle that ends with him placing his handkerchief against the corner of his thin lips and coughing weakly. “Ah, I guess that’s not so true. But, Nedzu was the one to hand me my diploma, too, so that’s what I mean. Like, ah, mentor, like mentee, Young Midoriya.”
Sheepishly, Toshinori and Izuku rub the backs of their necks at the same time, total mirrors of each other.
“I’m excited! I’m excited to hear Iida and Yaomomo’s speeches, and I have my first shift at Miruko’s agency tomorrow morning, so…this is exciting. Just, uh, new, I guess.” Izuku chews on his bottom lip and mutters to himself: “Do you think Miruko will fire me if I trip on my way across the stage? Oh, god. All of the heroes with agencies around the city are going to be here—what if none of them hire me after that? Hm. No, I’m sure they’ll understand, but what if they don’t?”
“Ah, Young Midoriya,” Toshinori tries, but Izuku’s muttering drowns him out. He presses his knuckle to his lip and furrows his brow as he considers everything that might possibly go wrong at his graduation ceremony and how each hypothetical might affect his job prospects in the near and far future.
“And what if I accidentally rip my diploma? Or it gets picked up in the wind and blown away? Would they give me a new one? Or would I just have to say, you know, okay. I guess there’s my diploma, just gone. I guess it doesn’t matter so much as long as I have my license. Oh, shoot, do I have my license? Where’s my wallet? No, no, I keep it in my utility belt. I don’t remember seeing it the last time I left my suit for repairs…ah, I should—”
“Let me get your tie for you, Young Midoriya!” Toshinori booms, loud enough that a door slams in surprise somewhere on a floor above, followed by a shout that sounds suspiciously like Kacchan cursing. Izuku can’t tell if it’s Toshinori or Kacchan’s yelling that breaks him out of his devolving cycle of muttering.
“Ah, sorry,” he finishes, flustered. He and Toshinori reach for the tie at the same time, murmuring awkwardly and drawing away in tandem, too. “Here, I’ll—” And Izuku makes sure to snatch the tie off the corner of his desk and arrange it carefully around his neck.
Toshinori steps closer, slouching harder so he’s not so looming. His bony fingers make quick work of the tie, obviously practiced enough that it’s mere muscle memory. The knot is neat and tight but not uncomfortable, and Izuku nods gratefully, going to step away, but Toshinori pulls him closer instead, wrapping his gangly arms around Izuku’s body. Izuku stiffens for all of half a second before relaxing into the loose hug and wrapping Toshinori in a tighter embrace.
“You’ve worked so hard, my boy,” Toshinori murmurs into the space above Izuku’s head. “I am so proud. I could not think of a more deserving person to be my successor.” The hug only grows tighter, like two octopi tangled in each other, the wetter Toshinori’s voice gets. His chest shudders under Izuku’s ear, a suppressed cry, and he doesn’t bother fighting the losing fight against his own tears. He doesn’t bother apologizing for wetting the fabric of Toshinori’s shirt, either.
Finally, after a long moment, they extricate their limbs from each other and step away, discreetly wiping at their tear-stained faces in the quiet of Izuku’s emptied dorm room. The walls are bare, and the sight of it, renewed, brings tears to Izuku’s ducts. Ah, this is so pathetic. He knew he’d cry today, but not so early—he hasn’t even gotten to the ceremony yet.
Toshinori sniffles and places one of his big, aged hands on Izuku’s shoulder.
“You are going to be an amazing hero, Young Midoriya.” With one final nod, Toshinori disappears back into the hallway, greeting another classmate on his way out. Izuku blinks at where he’d been the moment before, lip wobbling.
Kacchan appears in his doorway, his hands stuffed in his black dress pants and his shirt unbuttoned at the collar.
“Come on, nerd—fucking, are you crying already?” Kacchan shouts, accusing. Izuku wipes at his face with his sweaty palms, then the backs of his hands, his wrists, the arm of his shirt.
“No!”
“You totally are! What the hell?” Kacchan stomps into the room and slaps both hands down on Izuku’s shoulders, shaking him. “Get yourself together, dammit—Miruko is totally going to fire us if she sees you acting like a pussy during graduation!”
“Kacchan! I’m sorry!” Izuku blubbers, his hands wrapping around Kacchan’s forearms in a bid for mercy. Finally, Kacchan stops shaking him, leaving Izuku unbalanced and whiplashed.
“Tch,” he grunts, flicking at Izuku’s mussed tie. “At least you finally figured out how to tie your tie.”
“Ah. All Might did it for me,” Izuku admits.
“God fucking dammit, Deku.”
—
5
There is an easy solution, really. Simple. He should’ve found it years ago, if anything.
No tying involved, he still gets the illusion of wearing a tie, it’s a total win-win for everyone involved. Post-graduation life really has too many damn ties for Izuku’s liking, so this is his way of overcoming that, like a true hero.
Clip-on ties. Izuku would kiss whoever thought these up square on the lips if he knew who they were—seriously. Life changing. He never, ever bothers with even trying to tie a real tie anymore; in fact, he’s not sure he even owns any anymore. They’ve all been replaced with pre-tied illusions. God, Izuku loves clip-on ties.
Kacchan, decidedly, does not like them as much as Izuku does. It’s not surprising, really. While Kacchan has grown out of being a total bully alongside just growing up in general, he's still a nitpicker at heart, and his favorite person to nitpick is Izuku. Izuku might even call it teasing if Kacchan didn’t get so damn fired up about it.
If Izuku remembers correctly, this is Kacchan’s sentiment: “Fuck your fucking ties, and fuck you. Go to hell.” Ah, well, Izuku is probably forgetting a tch or some other obscenity that goes somewhere in there, but the point still stands.
He’d made the mistake of replying with, “I think you’re just jealous, Kacchan. My ties are always perfect now, and I saw that article in Heroes Weekly about all the times you’ve flopped. What did they call it? Dyna- Might Need a New Stylist? ”
Things get a little fuzzy after that. There was swearing, threats, explosions; the usual. Izuku has long since gotten used to it since becoming Kacchan’s hero partner. Ah, yeah—it’s so cool getting to be Kacchan’s hero partner.
They patrol for hours everyday, helping people when they need help, getting lunch together on their break, even though sometimes Kacchan wants spicy ramen and Izuku has been craving sushi for three weeks now. Then, they just go to both places, and they find a park where they can sit down at a picnic table or a bench and eat together, and it’s nice. It’s really, really nice.
They kick ass, too. Dynamight and Deku, the up-and-coming hero duo that has villains running with their tails between their legs (sometimes literally!). They’d worked their way up from sidekick status together, at Miruko’s agency, and they’d learned a lot there. Izuku learned that he hates desk duty, even more so now than he did when he was an intern during high school—because, now, he has a license, and he can actually, really help people, so why should he waste so much time sitting at a computer, writing up reports. Kacchan learned that he absolutely cannot, under no circumstances, answer the phones at the agency, even if there’s no one else around to answer them. Quite literally, it is better to have no one answer than to have Kacchan answer.
It took… several exploded phones to come to this conclusion.
Eventually, Miruko got tired of the two of them accidentally wreaking havoc in her offices, so she put them out on patrol more than any other sidekicks or duos. She was great; Izuku was lucky to have had a boss and teacher like her, and so was Kacchan, even though he wouldn’t admit it even with a gun to his head.
He and Miruko butt heads quite a bit. But that’s okay! Izuku has always been a wonderful mediator when it comes to Kacchan. It’s why they make such a good team.
“Deku, open the fucking door,” Kacchan barks from the hallway. He hadn’t even knocked, otherwise Izuku would have let him in. It’s not like the door is locked, either, so Kacchan could’ve just come in—even if it wasn’t, Kacchan has a spare key. Izuku huffs to himself, rolling his eyes.
“My neighbors are going to complain, Kacchan,” Izuku bitches as he opens the door. They both know it’s not true; one of Izuku’s only neighbors is an old woman who absolutely adores Kacchan because he’s the sort of guy that old women love, for some reason. It might be that Izuku is simply awkward around her, nodding and mumbling and not making eye contact when he encounters her on his way out.
She once mistook him for her late husband and beat on him with her rolled-up newspaper for coming home so late, leaving her alone in her cold bed, and he hasn’t been able to look her in the eye since.
But she loves Katsuki, and the asshole knows it.
“Nah, she’ll probably bake me fuckin’ cookies, nerd,” Kacchan grouses. “And I ain’t gonna share them with you, asshole.”
“You’d better get out your foul mouth soon, Kacchan,” Izuku tuts, disappearing down his hallway to finish getting ready. “You know they can still dock our standing at the ceremony.”
“Oh, shut the hell up. You know that they can kick us down a few spots on the Hero Billboard Chart if we’re late to the announcing ceremony. Maybe off the whole board, never to return to the top ten in all of our career, all because you take too damn long to get ready. Ugh.” Kacchan roots through Izuku’s kitchen, probably muttering under his breath about Izuku’s grocery habits (admittedly subpar) like always.
“They won’t!” Izuku insists, reemerging from his bedroom, this time with his suit jacket thrown over the crook of his elbow, clip-on tie safely in place.
“They will ,” Kacchan hums. “They’re petty shits, and you know it. The Commission hates it when people aren’t their bitch.”
“We aren’t their bitch , Kacchan, don’t be so vulgar. We just…work for them.”
“More like under them,” Kacchan mutters, glowering. He had butt heads with the Hero Commission even more than he did with Miruko, solely because they found any possible excuse to hit him with destruction of property reports, which were notoriously tedious to fill out.
“Yes, sure. We work under them, but that doesn’t mean we’re their bitch, okay?”
“Mhm,” Kacchan drawls. “You know what else they’ll knock us out of the top ten for?”
“What, Kacchan?” Izuku sighs, exasperated. “I’m ready to go, just let me—” But Kacchan’s hand snaps out from where it had been resting on Izuku’s kitchen counter and wraps around the knot of Izuku’s tie in a tight grip, the same grip he usually reserves for the captured villains that really pissed him off.
Izuku must have really screwed up this time, but he can’t think of what he did. Maybe it was because they were running on time, and to Kacchan, on time is late? Or maybe Izuku had used the wrong deodorant. Or the wrong cologne, and the smell was too strong and made Kacchan mad. As discreetly as possible, Izuku tries to sniff himself, but he can’t smell anything that would set Kacchan off.
“Ah—ah, Kacchan I’m sorry, whatever I did,” Izuku squeaks. Damage control, better safe than exploded to bits right before the ranking ceremony. Izuku can only imagine the headlines: Hero Duo Made Hero Solo, Dynamight Takes Heroics Leaderboard by Storm! No, Izuku can’t die here.
“Fucking—clip-on, ugh.” Kacchan’s mouth is puckered with disgust like he’d taken a mouthful of soured milk, and he yanks off Izuku’s tie, discarding it next to the kitchen sink and procuring a real tie from somewhere on his person. “I knew you’d try to pull some shit like this, dumbass, so I brought an extra.”
“We’re gonna be late if I spend the time trying to—”
“No, no, idiot. I’m going to tie it for you, because you’re apparently still incompetent enough to not know how to tie your own fucking tie, and then we’re gonna leave. And we ain’t gonna be late, either, we’re gonna get there on time if it fucking kills us.” As Kacchan keeps ranting, he steps into Izuku’s personal space to arrange the tie around his neck and tie it. “Can’t believe you still haven’t fuckin’ learned to tie a tie. It ain’t that damn hard, nerd, and you’d think an idiot as smart as you—no, an idiot with two brain cells—could figure it out before he got to his first hero billboard ranking ceremony. God, real heroes wear proper ties, all that shit, how the hell did you get so far in life without being able to do this on your own, you hot fuckin’ mess?”
“Your mom used to say that, too,” Izuku murmurs, just for the space between them. “‘Real heroes wear proper ties.’ You got that from her, didn’t you?”
“Don’t bring my fuckin’ mom into this,” Kacchan huffs, rolling his eyes. “But…yes. She used to say that when I was a little brat, learning how to do it. Mostly, I wanted her to fuck off, but—I guess it stuck, or whatever.” He rolls his eyes again for good measure.
“Kacchan, we’re a good team,” Izuku tells him, beaming even as Kacchan jerks the tie probably harder than strictly necessary.
“Yeah, nerd,” Kacchan hums. “We really are.”
They stand there for a long moment, Izuku’s tie successfully tied, definitely not clipped on, and Kacchan breathing in his space.
“Now, learn how to tie a fucking tie before the next ranking ceremony, or I’ll ditch your ass and go solo.” Kacchan huffs and turns on his heel, starting for Izuku’s front door. Izuku remains where he left him, beaming to himself and to Kacchan’s back.
“Sure, Kacchan.”
—
1
Izuku gapes at himself, hands fluttering uselessly and excitedly around himself. His open mouth soon morphs into a wide smile, all teeth and stretched lips, his eyes closed with the force of it, and he laughs a little deliriously, unbelievingly.
“Holy shit,” he mutters to himself. “Holy—holy shit.” Izuku dances around his small closet, his wide shoulders knocking into his hanging shirts, shins making friends with the shelves of his shoe racks, but he throws up his hands in victory and prances around his own bedroom, the dorkiest of all dorky victory dances.
He’s glad he’s alone in his apartment for this, but damn does he want to go boasting to everyone he knows and who knows him. He’s sure some gossip magazine somewhere would love to hear about this—Number One Hero Deku Ties His Own Tie For The First Time Ever.
World-shattering, truly.
Well, number one hero for now. He and Kacchan have been trading it off to each other monthly for the past eight months. Kacchan lords the fact that he got it first, then Izuku, over his head, but Izuku finds that he doesn’t mind. He likes being at the top—with Kacchan, always. It’s no competition, not to Izuku, and not anymore.
When he was younger, he might’ve cared more, but now, he wouldn’t mind giving some younger hero a chance at the top of the billboard—not that he’s going to give it up without a fight, and Kacchan sure as hell isn’t either. But…one day.
And it’ll be okay, when that day comes.
For now, though, he is Number One Hero Deku, and he just tied his own fucking tie. He’s maybe a little (okay, a lot) too old to be so happy about it, and he’s definitely way too old to have never done it himself before, but he’s learned over the years to take small victories where they come, despite the big victories.
There is so much to celebrate, in this life he’s made for himself.
He has his own apartment in a quaint little building just outside the center of the city, and he couldn’t love it more. From his living room windows, he can see almost everything: the city, the mountains beyond the city, the sunrise. And, no roommates. He’d had a phase of roommate after roommate, each shittier than the last (seriously, one of the last ones had some sort of hobby that involved actually growing and observing strains of fungus in different conditions; apparently, one of these conditions could only be simulated in their shared shower), but now, he can wake up and tie his own tie and dance his way through his apartment with no one watching. Well, no one except for his adopted cat, who watches lazily from her favorite perch on top of the loveseat in the living room. She blinks once, then lays back down, deeming his high energy far too draining.
Still, Izuku runs his scarred hand over her back once, and she flicks her tail with a rumbling purr.
“You love me,” he tells her, but she doesn’t respond. “Sweet, little cat. Ugh. Oh! I tied my own tie, isn’t that so— exciting ?”
Still, his cat sleeps on. He leaves her to it.
Another small (maybe bordering on medium) victory: the invite tacked to his fridge with a Red Riot-themed magnet. The invite is plain, basically a white index card, with the U.A. logo stamped into the top left corner, inviting Hero Deku to hand out awards to the winners of this years’ Sports Festival. He’d squealed at an embarrassingly high decibel upon opening that envelope, dancing around his apartment in a similar way to the way he’s shimmying around now, and he’d called Kacchan to boast, only to get excited all over again after learning that Kacchan got the same invitation and would be at the Sports Festival, too.
Kacchan was not so verbally excited, but Izuku knew him well enough that he could tell, even over the phone, he was practically vibrating out of his skin.
And today was the day. Izuku couldn’t wait to see the new heroics students this year; he’d already picked out the notebook he wanted to take, stocked up on pens to bring alone, and he’d tied his own tie.
He is two hours early to the Sports Festival, despite his VIP-status, which grants him a good parking spot and an even better seat to watch the festival from, but when he gets there, Kacchan is pulling into his reserved parking spot at the same time. They stare at each other through their respective windshields.
“Fucking nerd,” Kacchan mouths.
“You’re one to talk,” Izuku mouths back, gesturing to the fact that they’re both here, in the half-deserted parking lot. Kacchan rolls his eyes, exaggerated so Izuku can see it even with the distance between them.
Kacchan’s so dramatic. That’s one thing he’ll probably never grow out of, even though he’s much less volatile now than he was when they actually attended U.A., as evident by the fact that Kacchan actually holds a conversation with a general education student who approaches him in the hallway with questions about his Quirk instead of calling her a fucking Extra or telling her to fuck off.
It’s growth, really. Izuku stands by, watching and smiling to himself at the interaction. The kid’s eyes are wide, sparkling, excited as hell to be talking to one of her favorite heroes of all time, her fingers working in the air like she wants to type out all of his answers and immortalize them for herself.
She’s like an eerie reflection of Izuku himself. His eyes dart between the student and Kacchan, and his cheeks hurt from smiling so wide.
He and Kacchan sit next to each other during the festival, and Izuku jots down notes to hand off to Aizawa on all of the participants’ Quirks. Next to him, Kacchan tenses at all the right times, cheers at the end of each stage, even when his obvious favorites (there’s a kid with an energy Quirk that looks so much like Kacchan’s, it’s amazing, and Izuku is praying for Aizawa this year) don’t make it through to the last stage.
The fighting bracket is…history-making.
Never before in all of U.A. history has a Quirkless student made it this far, usually Quirkless kids don’t make it into the school at all, but then the general education student from the hallway wins the entire bracket, gets first in the Sports Festival, and before Izuku is given the medal to present her with, Aizawa pulls him and Kacchan aside.
“I thought you’d both like to know,” he murmurs, almost drowned out by the cheers from the crowd above them, awaiting the awards ceremony, “but Okimi, the girl who got first, is Quirkless. Toe joint and all.” As he says it, he keeps his eyes on Izuku’s face.
Izuku crumples with joy, blubbering and crying. Aizawa leaves him and Kacchan to it, warning them that Izuku will need to get it together quickly, with how excited the crowds in the stands are getting.
Kacchan crouches next to him, his hand rubbing up and down the middle of Izuku’s back as he weeps in one of the U.A. stadium hallways.
“I’m—I’m so happy ,” Izuku sobs, his voice wet and thick. “I don’t know why I’m crying so hard . She did amazing, so amazing, and I didn’t even realize she was Quirkless.”
“Things are different now, Deku,” Kacchan promises. “That crowd out there is thrilled that she won. She’ll probably get a spot in the heroics department, after that performance.” Kacchan whistles. “One hell of a performance it was, too, shit.”
Izuku laughs amid his crying, grinning shakily and clutching the first-place medal box. “I’m so happy. I’m so proud.”
“It’s everything you’ve worked for,” Kacchan tells him, tapping him on the back with his index finger. Izuku had started to publicly advocate for Quirkless equality in recent years, since getting into the top five, and since starting to funnel more time and energy into that, Quirkless suicide rates have started, finally, to sink, little by little.
And now, Okimi, the first Quirkless victor of the U.A. Sports Festival.
Izuku wipes his face on the back of his hand and stands, bringing Kacchan up with him. Together, they stand tall.
“You could’ve done it,” Kacchan says, quieter than Izuku’s ever heard him. “It could’ve been you.”
“No, it couldn’t have been,” Izuku admits. “You were always stronger than me, especially back when we were young, not to mention Shouto. And what could I have done against Kirishima? Or Denki? I couldn’t have done it—I only ever got so far in the Sports Festival because I had a Quirk, and I only go into U.A. because I had a Quirk. I couldn’t have done what Okimi just did. And that’s okay.”
“It is?” Kacchan asks, surprised.
“Yeah, I’m okay with knowing that. Because Okimi just kicked ass in that ring, and everyone in that stadium is cheering for her. Things are different now, Kacchan.” Izuku wiggles the medal box. “We have to go out there and give her what she deserves, now.” He starts towards the stadium entrance, a little ways down the hall.
“Izuku, wait,” Kacchan requests, standing a little behind Izuku. “I don’t care what you try to say. You could’ve done it. You could’ve been a hero, even when you were Quirkless.” He doesn’t duck his head; Kacchan keeps his eyes on Izuku.
It’s exactly what he envisioned for himself back when he was in junior high. This—this is what his dream was, not just being a hero.
Then, Kacchan steps forward with a soft smile and yanks on his tie, effectively strangling Izuku, and ruins the moment. When Izuku looks up, his red eyes are round with surprise.
“It’s a real tie,” he says. “Who tied it for you?”
“I did it myself,” Izuku replies, and he would be offended if he himself hadn’t been surprised when his attempt this morning turned out with a successful, not-half-bad knot.
“You did it yourself,” Kacchan breathes, sounding shocked. “You—you, Deku, tied your own tie. You learned to tie a tie?” He grabs Izuku by the shoulders and shakes him once. “You know what this fucking means?”
“Huh? No, Kacchan.”
“I won a bet with Round Face—she said you’d never learn, but I said you’ve always known how, but you’re a freeloading asshole who always wants everyone else doing shit for him. No way you wouldn’t know how by now, there’s too many goddamn formal events for us to go to for even someone as useless as you not to learn.”
“Hey!” Izuku protests, but Kacchan only laughs to himself.
“But you did it. Holy shit, you tied your own tie.” Kacchan laughs, incredulous, and he bolts down the hallway, probably to find Ochako and get her to pay up on their bet.
Izuku doesn’t bother trying to tell him that this knot was probably a total fluke, and he definitely couldn’t recreate it if he tried.
“Kacchan, wait!” he shouts instead. “Get your money after we give out these medals!”
They burst out onto the bright field, together, and around them, the crowd cheers.