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Izuku laid on the couch of his and Shouto’s apartment, the one they’d shared ever since graduating from UA. Endeavor didn’t want to let his ‘masterpiece’ go at first for fear that he’d break away from his training regimen and wouldn’t be able to coach himself to beat All Might. Turned out, he might’ve been right, back then. Then again, Izuku didn’t know whether Endeavor being involved with Shouto’s training would’ve helped his career at all.
The apartment itself was about what one could expect from a twenty-five-year-old couple making their way through the professional world for the first time. Unwashed dishes in the sink neither of them had the time or energy to wash after patrol, minimal furniture that was just enough for the place to look lived-in while also conveying that its residents mainly used it to sleep. There wasn’t any semblance of a planned-out color palette – most things in their space were either hand-me-downs from family and friends or picked up from IKEA in a hurry with no consideration for style or measurements. Problem was, they weren’t new to their jobs, fresh-faced recent college graduates, they’d been living in this apartment and working as heroes for going on seven years now.
“Oh. Hm. Same positions from last year again. For both of us,” his boyfriend said, with a tone too detached and uncaring for the situation in Izuku’s mind. He raised his two-toned brows at his phone screen in a nonchalance that anyone who didn’t know Shouto as well as Izuku did would think was pretend.
“Oh.”
The Hero Rankings for this year had come out earlier in the day, maybe around two hours ago. Izuku and Shouto weren’t the type to wait by their phones, feverishly refreshing the page in hopes of rising up a rank or two. No, they’d already grown out of that phase. For anyone who wasn’t in the very top, the yearly announcements tended to lose their magic early on.
“Something’s wrong,” Shouto noticed, and Izuku should’ve predicted this. Even if he came off about as emotionally intelligent as a clump of ice to strangers, Shouto could be surprisingly perceptive with those he cared about, especially Izuku. When it came to him, Shouto could detect even the slightest dip in mood like some sort of weird, feelings-smelling bloodhound.
“No, I’m just a little tired, I guess.”
Shouto sighed, not trusting Izuku’s words in the least. “You’re always tired these days. I swear, the day I get you to go to sleep at a reasonable time, I’ll take myself out to a nice dinner or something. What is it really?”
“Nothing, I told you!”
“Why do I not believe that?”
During their brief game of denial, Shouto had given up his seat on one of the pillows around their dinner table and migrated to the couch next to Izuku. As soon as he felt the cushion dip with his boyfriend’s weight behind his head, Izuku sat up – partly to make room for Shouto to sit comfortably, partly to be able to escape eye contact without explicitly turning away to look at the black screen of their TV. Averting his gaze down to the couch cushion in front of him was somehow more comfortable than finding a spot on the ceiling.
He stayed quiet for a little while, during which Shouto didn’t rush him or demand an explanation, only placing his right hand on top of Izuku’s, which was gripping the back of the couch. From the numerous emotionally vulnerable conversations they’d had in the past, he was fully aware that one was coming, just as soon as Izuku was ready to say it.
“I don’t know,” Izuku finally choked out, his finger automatically moving to draw swirly designs on the top of his right foot. As soon as he’d gotten the words out, a fat drop of water darkened a circle on his white sock. Oh good, he was already crying. “I just always thought I’d be something… more.”
“Something more?” Shouto prompted.
“I mean, yeah. I’m – I’m All Might’s successor, for fuck’s sake. We fought all those villains back in high school. We were in a fucking war, fighting on, like, the literal front lines, against the biggest bad that’s ever badded, even if there’s no record of that.” He took a deep breath, finally willing himself to drag his gaze up to meet Shouto’s. “I checked. The only mention of hero students is that everyone testified we didn’t fight in the war in any capacity. I guess they just didn’t want to admit they needed our help when the public’s trust in them was already so fragile. Sending students to help, even in the background, would probably have been the final nail in the coffin.” Izuku noticed the tone of his voice turning almost clinical, detached, like he was just presenting a report to his superior.
As soon as he’d noticed it, though, the hastily-built dam that held all his emotions gave way once again. This time, something new and rare trickled in, a tiny wave of – bitterness? – made its way into his smile. “I just – I thought having this quirk would make me a great hero. But instead, I’m here, in this dingy fucking apartment, stagnated at eighty-fucking-seventh for the last five years.”
Shouto blinked in surprise and quickly schooled his expression back to a blank one, careful not to give away any obvious emotions, but that brief moment was enough for Izuku. This was unusual, after all, the vast majority of his anger was directed and taken out on the villains who deserved it. Fighting was the only time it came out, the other incredibly rare times were just a result of poor emotional control.
Nonetheless, Shouto seemed to move past the slight initial shock. Izuku could almost hear the ‘okay, I guess we’re doing this now’ resonating in his boyfriend’s thoughts.
“Well, it’s not like any of us expected to be in the top ten right after we debuted,” Shouto reasoned.
“Hawks did it, why couldn’t we?”
“Hawks did it because the Commission manipulated the charts to make him look good. They also trained him like he was a machine for his entire childhood.”
Izuku scoffed, the resentment building in his chest, growing and festering like a rot left unattained for a moment too long. “So he trained hard, so what? A lot of people do. We did. What, you’re telling me you’re not fucking disappointed that none of Endeavor’s abuse ended up paying off in the real world?”
“Midoriya.”
As soon as those words left his mouth, reinforced by Shouto’s stern interruption, he knew he’d gone too far. You couldn’t just bring up someone’s greatest trauma in an argument about something entirely irrelevant, just to prove a point. Except, just as soon as he’d realized that, he also realized that he couldn’t take it back now. He had to make Shouto understand, really see this reality’s fatal flaws along with him, get angry with him by first getting angry at him.
So, he hardened his gaze in determination, set his jaw in a rigid line. “No, you don’t get to ‘Midoriya’ me. C’mon, look me in the fucking eyes and tell me you’re not the slightest bit angry that you were beat up every single goddamn day and none of it matters at all? You’re, what, ninety-first? And you went through all that shit to be at the top, right? To prove to daddy that you can be number one without your fire? But now, you failed. I failed. They fucking lied to us!”
Shouto’s steely composure didn’t give way, his patience didn’t waver when he started, slow and deliberate, “We knew it was going to be hard –“
“Yes! We did! We did, Shouto, but how can you just sit there and not feel the tiniest goddamn bit betrayed?” His speech was getting more and more hurried by the second, Izuku could feel it, but he was utterly powerless to stop it. “I was trained to be All Might, you were trained to surpass him, now look at us, we’re not even at the top of our fucking class! Maybe I was better off taking that jump, that way I wouldn’t’ve had to deal with any of this shit.”
Next to him, his boyfriend inhaled sharply. He knew Izuku didn’t truly mean that last comment – or, Izuku hoped he didn’t. The last thing this situation needed was Shouto getting concerned over every little inconsequential thing all over again. Nevertheless, whether or not Shouto took his words seriously, he cupped Izuku’s jaw with both his hands in a way that was somehow both gentle and urgent, turning Izuku’s head to face his own. “Izuku. Izuku. Stop. Look at me,” he murmured, the crease between his brows deepening.
As soon as Izuku made eye contact, Shouto visibly softened and moved his hands from Izuku’s cheeks down to his biceps, then dropped them completely. “There you go. Okay.” He puffed out a breath, probably to buy himself time to think over his next words. “Our lives have never been fair,” he began. “They never even pretended to be. We were both treated differently in a very obvious way because of how we were born, and it was comparatively worse than a normal person’s life. But, you know, just because we were – were… traumatized,” Shouto stumbled through that word, saying it still made him uncomfortable even after all these years, “that doesn’t make us the main characters of some manga, alright? It doesn’t give us any more of a right to be… special.”
Izuku let his head drop to rest on the back of the couch and lifted the corners of his mouth into a bitter smile. “So we went through all that for nothing, is that what you’re trying to say?”
“No. Not for nothing.” Shouto’s gaze shifted to look somewhere past Izuku’s shoulder, the man himself deep in thought. “I never would’ve had the strength to defeat Da- To- my older brother if I hadn’t had so much experience fighting a family member while severely injured. If you’d… made that decision when you were younger, the world could’ve looked a lot different. Well, I don’t actually know how Lemillion would’ve handled One for All, but… the things you – we – had to experience, they made us stronger.”
“Stronger doesn’t mean shit when it’s not nearly enough.”
He frowned, less from any negative emotions and more from genuine confusion. “Enough for what? Izuku, don’t tell me your sole motivation is the popularity or money that comes with being a high-ranker. In high school, I clearly remember you saying you were going to be a hero to help people. You don’t need to be number one to help people.”
“But I can help more people if I get called on more missions. If people recognize me straight away and call for help. If just my rumored presence in a city can prevent crime.”
Izuku felt himself getting heated again. His emotions were taking over, clouding his initial motivation to awaken a similar feeling of entitlement in Shouto to his own and replacing it with a desire to just prove himself right. To win, just this once, even if it’s in a low-stakes argument/debate/whatever this conversation was and witnessed by only one person.
“I think being in All Might’s shadow has skewed your view of what a good hero is. You don’t have to be a carbon copy of him, I thought you’d already realized that a long time ago?”
Of course he knew he didn’t have to be All Might. He’d tried, he’d failed, now he was here. Obviously, he needed to be his own kind of hero. Because – because…
“I’m not trying to – you know what, maybe I am,” he snapped, his spine straightening in indignation. “Maybe I am trying to be All Might, because he was and still continues to be the best hero of all time, and if you don’t look up to him, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. He’s the golden standard we should all strive for. If we were all All Might, none of this – this… bullshit would be happening.”
“Problem is, we can’t all be All Might. Don’t you remember what happened before the PLF war?”
“Right, right, All Might retired, there wasn’t anyone to replace him, society collapsed, blah blah blah,” Izuku said, reciting the history he’d lived through himself and had been forced to talk about countless times. “I don’t see how that’s an argument against all of us trying to be like All Might. If there had been someone to replace him –“
“But it’s not realistic. He was a – an anomaly. A once-in-a-million human being. The ideal he created was toxic to our entire society.” Shouto’s tone was scalding now, too, his emotional energy beginning to reflect Izuku’s. “Just look at how my old man turned out. You can’t just replicate something like that, Izuku, you’ll run yourself to the ground.” He looked Izuku up and down, lingering on the dark bags under his eyes and the scars littering his arms. The ones on Izuku’s legs were hidden by the All Might sweatpants he’d gotten in high school. For a second, Shouto’s gaze also stopped at one of the hero’s faces, the one on his right thigh that was covering a bullet wound from two years ago. “Maybe you already have.”
“So I’ll run myself to the fucking ground, so what? What’s my one life compared to the thousands – millions – I could save?”
Shouto drew Izuku’s face closer to his. From this distance, the feverish, desperate glint in Shouto’s eyes was noticeable. He had the air of someone using their last resort in battle, ready to risk everything to possibly achieve the greater good. “You know, Izuku, there are a ton of people who care about you. Who – who love you.” This was said with a tone that was in no way loving or caring – it was more like venom, spat out at him, turning the meaning behind Shouto’s words into a weapon. “And you’d decide to fuck every single one of them over, ruin their lives, just because you’re chasing some pipe dream of being the next Symbol of Peace?”
“Yes!”
In an instant, everything seemed to grind to a halt.
All Izuku heard was the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears, the distant sirens outside punctuating the utter stillness of the moment.
Shouto’s face fell with a numb kind of shock, and Izuku could practically see his emotional walls rise up. Stiffly and hesitantly, Shouto stood up.
“Oh. Well. I guess I’ll, uh… go, before I’ll get hurt, then.” He took his phone, wallet and keys from their dinner table and started putting on his shoes, grabbing a coat on his way out, stumbling out the door like his mind was clouded with something.
No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening – “No. Wait, Shouto –“
“I’ll be staying at Momo and Kyouka’s for now. Call me when you’re ready to stay alive.”
The door closed with a click that sounded so final, a period at the end of a sentence. Just that, a period, not the slam of an exclamation point, not the slow, uncertain creaking of a question mark, begging for Izuku to say something, to apologize, take back what he’d said or rush after Shouto. This felt like the logical conclusion of a chapter, if not the entire story. He was just… gone.
Not that Izuku would’ve taken any of his words back, even if Shouto had given him an opportunity to do so. Sure, he regrets his tone, maybe would’ve phrased things differently, but still would’ve stood by the core meaning. They were heroes, after all, saving as many people as possible and striving to the top was their duty, was it not? Training for countless hours, sacrificing sleep and personal relationships and smiling through unimaginable, debilitating pain, all for the greater good, Plus Ultra, right?
This relationship, Shouto, it was all going to fall apart eventually. Such a large rift in their attitudes with neither one willing to budge, Shouto not caring enough to work hard and Izuku not sacrificing his morals, it would’ve been a dealbreaker either way, no matter how long they would’ve tried to drag it out. At least this way, it had been a clean break, the band-aid ripped off quickly.
It was good that they’d gotten that out of the way now, so Izuku could forget about this distraction and focus on what was really important. This was a mistake, a six-year journey in the wrong direction, and he was lucky he’d stepped off that path before it was too late. Now, he could begin working toward his dream of the top spot in earnest and his life could finally begin.
So why did it feel like his chest was being incinerated to ashes?
Why did he want to scream until his lungs gave out?
Why was his mind torn between curling up in a tight ball and wasting away and picking up the couch he was sitting on and throwing it around the room to give his buzzing limbs some sort of release?
Some time passed. He might’ve screamed a bit. He wasn’t completely sure what his body had been doing while his brain whirled from one emotion to the next. Surely, he’d wake up to noise complaints from the neighbors the following morning.
It didn’t matter though. Shouto was gone, and there was no way to get him back. Not without compromising his entire reason for being, at least.
People said when you looked at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just seemed like flags. Nobody had told him that even when you finally took those glasses off to be met with miles and miles of red as far as the eye could see, all you wanted was to retreat into their comfort again and have things go back to normal.
Izuku would’ve given anything at that point – his life, his soul, his principles – to feel Shouto’s arms around him again. To have him stroke his hair and whisper into his ear that everything was going to be alright. Was it healthy? No. Would he actually have done it, at the expense of his entire career? Absolutely not. But did he still clutch that red-and-green pillow Shouto had gotten him for Christmas three years ago close to his chest like he’d combust if he ever let go?