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When Izuku had agreed to become All Might’s successor, he had been prepared for a lot of things.
Well, after he’d stopped screaming in his head and had time to actually think about what he’d agreed to.
He had been prepared for hard work, for blood, sweat, and tears.
Had been ready and willing to push himself harder than ever before to reach further than he’d ever thought possible.
Izuku had been prepared to bleed and hurt, to fight and try, with everything that he is.
He’d even pushed himself to the brink and managed to finish the beach an entire three months early.
So, staring at All Might on those freshly cleaned sands, Izuku had been ready and willing to give his all and then more in order to pick up the torch All Might was handing him and take it forward to achieve his dream.
He still is.
It’s just …
The ghosts are a bit much.
~~~
Izuku had spent a week researching the occult, wafting sage around the apartment, and getting bags of purifying salts express-delivered before he’d realized that the “ghosts” he was seeing around his apartment might have something to do with the quirk he’d just been handed.
In his defense, Izuku had also spent at least three of those days hopped up on painkillers. He’d been given a few days worth of pills when he shattered his arm attempting to spar with All Might for the first time post quirk transfer. His bones had been pieced back together like a jigsaw puzzle, but the aches did linger.
Plus, it hadn’t helped that Banjo had felt the need to write messages on the bathroom mirror every time Izuku took a shower.
Izuku maintains that the shriek he’d let out after stepping out of the shower and seeing “one of us” written on his bathroom mirror in jagged swipes was a perfectly reasonable response.
Or that thinking he was being haunted wasn’t too far-fetched, considering the way they liked to hover at the foot of his bed and watch him sleep sometimes.
It had only been when Izuku, half hysterical and halfway through an online exorcist certification course, had described one of his newly acquired sleep paralysis demons to All Might that they had realized what was happening.
Izuku had only gotten about halfway through his description of the tall, buff female demon he’d caught a glimpse of when All Might had started sniffling, warbled out the name “Nana” and then folded in on himself.
Eventually, Izuku had been given the full story of the quirk, and they had both realized that One For All was a lot more than a relatively simple stockpiling quirk.
Izuku is apparently perma-haunted now.
Cool.
~~~
Izuku has spent the majority of his life being some degree of alone and lonely.
So, startling introduction aside, Izuku likes to think that he’s adjusted to the vestiges with surprising ease.
It’s nice, having someone, or many someones really, around the apartment with him when normally Izuku was left on his own, an unfortunate side effect of Inko’s work hours.
So, really, it’s no surprise to Izuku when he quickly falls into a routine with the vestiges.
They’re always with him, wandering his apartment and following him on his runs, helping him ease into using One For All during his training, and generally just whispering in his mind like a constant stream of conversation playing in the background of Izuku’s day.
Izuku likes it more than he would have ever thought possible.
But …
Well.
The bleed-through is a bit … unusual.
~~~
A month into Izuku’s new normal, he wakes up, rolls out of his bed and onto the floor, and cranks out a hundred push-ups before his eyes are ready to fully open.
Then, that finished, he stumbles into the kitchen and scowls at the cold coffee maker.
“Ssi-bal,” Izuku hisses, the Korean flowing off of his tongue even as he turns toward the refrigerator.
If he can’t have coffee for breakfast as the gods intended, then a beer and some miyeok guk will have to do instead.
Izuku is half buried in the refrigerator, muttering angrily to himself in Korean as he searches for the peach beer he can practically taste on the back of his tongue, when he freezes.
Replays the last few minutes in his head now that the rest of his brain has come online.
He instantly picks out a few issues with what he can remember.
One, Izuku doesn't typically start his day with a hundred push-ups.
Two, he has never had peach beer before in his life.
And three, Izuku does not speak Korean.
But, as Izuku quickly discovers, that was almost point for point En’s most common morning wake-up routine.
‘Huh,’ Izuku can’t help but think as he sips at his freshly brewed coffee while he stares blankly at the kitchen wall.
Neat.
~~~
As it turns out, living with the vestiges is actually like having an active group chat running constantly in the back of his head.
Which is a thought that Yoichi latches onto for some reason and refuses to let go.
Which means that Izuku finds himself thinking things like ‘ok chat’ every time the vestiges want to heckle him about something, or he needs to consult them about a random skill he now has.
Still, over the course of the next few weeks, Izuku learns that he now has access to an entire stockpile of non-quirk-related skills, habits, knowledge, and opinions.
Which is both fascinating and useful, but also kind of inconvenient sometimes.
On the one hand, Izuku now knows six languages instead of his previous two.
The trade-off for that is that he tends to slip in and out of them without realizing it. And the English he has spent years perfecting, not only because of All Might but because of his faint hope of sharing his skill with his father one day, now comes to him even easier than before but with what he knows is a thick New Jersey accent.
Something that, if the snickering he can feel in the back of his mind is anything to go by, can be blamed directly on Third who, like Second, still refuses to tell Izuku his name.
So Izuku can cook dishes spanning at least four different cultures now, but he also craves peach beer and Chunghwa brand cigarettes. The first of which he promises to buy as soon as he legally can, and the second of which he refuses to entertain, much to Hikage’s sulking grief.
Izuku misses playing pachinko, has taken up knitting in his downtime, finds himself borderline lusting after new kitchenware, and now has strong feelings on both the national tax code and the glory of naps.
He is also relatively sure he could drive everything from a motorcycle to an actual helicopter, even though the number of times Izuku has been in a private car could be counted on two hands.
His analysis, something the vestiges had actually been impressed with much to Izuku’s embarrassment, also advances in leaps and bounds.
Izuku is able to break down fights, skill-sets, and quirks even further than before, backed as his work now is by the experience and cynicism of multiple pro-heroes, vigilantes, and freedom fighters.
But, most awkward of all is that, after a run-in with a few classmates, Izuku also realizes that he finds anyone under the age of twenty-two to be utterly exhausting.
Loud children who don’t understand the world they’re in or how it works. Babies who need looking after and proper direction so they don’t get themselves or others killed.
Even Toshinori invokes a fond sort of indulgence and what can only be described as mothering tendencies in Izuku. Spill over, Izuku knows, that comes directly from Nana.
Izuku feels so much older than his physical years now, feels tempered and calmer, his body now lined with the type of steadiness earned from decades of hard experience.
Which might make things a bit awkward for Izuku going forward, especially if he does manage to get into UA like he’s always hoped.
He has a feeling that making friends with people his physical age is going to be even harder than before, but in a newer, much stranger way.
But really, it is what it is at this point, so what can he do about it?
~~~
What he ends up doing is manifesting both Blackwhip and Float during the entrance exam, destroying an obscene number of robots, saving a girl from the Zero Pointer, destroying the Zero Pointer, and only managing to fracture his left leg because he didn’t stick the landing correctly.
Something that Nana promises to drill Izuku on until he’ll be able to float and land without so much as stirring up dust in his sleep.
Yay.
‘Ok chat,’ Izuku thinks after Recovery Girl kisses him, and drowsiness begins to close in around the edges. ‘Think we did okay?’
The flood of confirmations and encouragement sends Izuku staggering home with a grin on his face.
No matter what happens going forward, at least Izuku has this.
Has them.
~~~
Two weeks later, Izuku stares down at his acceptance letter and the ranking that puts him in first place all the way around and all he can really do is go …
“Huh,” Izuku says, one hand using his knitting needles to twist his hair up into a bun. He’s still getting used to the length and weight of it, but having it grown out a bit has made the majority of the vestiges happy. And since Izuku’s never really given his hair much thought, it’s not like he minds either way. “I’d say that’s a win in the chat for us.”
~~~
The first day of class … happens.
Beyond the loud chorus of hisses and boos that ring out at being forced to once again breathe the same rage-filled air as Bakugō, the vestiges stay mostly calm.
They all share a mutual amusement at watching Eraserhead slug his way into the classroom, giving the man a shallow nod of acknowledgement when their eyes meet, careful not to draw any attention to him.
“Kids these days,” Izuku can’t help but grumble, standing dressed on the field after a quick change, as he waits for the rest of his class to make their way outside to the testing area.
Izuku feels Aizawa’s eyes on him, but doesn’t bother to engage with the man.
~~~
Content with his top score, Izuku makes his way back into the building, only stopping to gather his things from the classroom before he heads toward the staff room.
He’s not really all that surprised to see that Aizawa has somehow beaten him there, but Izuku doesn’t dwell on that.
Instead, all of his attention is focused on one person.
“Toshi,” Izuku calls as he slips past Present Mic and into the staff room, bee-lining toward Toshinori.
“Ah,” Toshinori, powered down and settled behind his desk, lights up just a bit even as the rest of the staff seems to freeze, “Young Midoriya!”
“Toshi, what did we talk about?” Izuku scolds even as he opens his backpack and riffles through it.
“Forgive me, Izuku-kun,” Toshinori corrects sheepishly.
“Good boy,” Izuku praises absently, as he pulls out his entire reason for being here. “Don’t think you’re getting away with not eating again.”
Izuku places the insulated bento and the thermos he’d dug out onto Toshi’s desk.
“Eat it all or I will call Sora,” Izuku promises. “And if you make me track you down, you’ll wish I’d called Sora.”
“N-No need for that,” Toshi practically snatches the bento up, eyes wide and sweat beading on his brow.
“Good, good,” Izuku pats him on the head and then turns on his heel to head back toward the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Izuku’s already out the door, mind occupied with thoughts of a hot shower and a relaxing evening listening to his police scanner, by the time the noise starts up behind him.
~~~
Things progress easily enough after that.
Izuku ends up elected Class President with Yaoyorozu as his Vice by an overwhelming majority because, according to Kaminari and Ashido, he has Big Mom Energy.
Which Nana finds hilarious and the others refuse to admit to.
It’s fine with Izuku, because at least this way he’ll be able to ride herd on the little idiots more effectively.
~~~
Things only really change again when the USJ rolls around.
Izuku, the chat furiously silent and focused in the back of his head, ping-pongs around the atrium, the Nomu hot on his tail, as Aizawa faces off against a horde of lower-tier villains.
Blackwhip helping him crawl across the landscape, Izuku has a split second to observe Eraserhead at work. To see how expertly he uses his capture scarf, twirling in and out of danger, leaving unconscious villains in his wake.
‘What a man,’ is the collective thought of the chat.
And Izuku, even distracted as he is with attempting not to die horribly, can’t really disagree.
~~~
When it comes to romance, Izuku has always known that gender would never really be an issue with him.
He’s always cared more about who a person is than what they look like or identify as.
Any romantic relationship he might be blessed with, Izuku has always been sure, will be much the same way.
The closest he’s ever come to having hard lines about the issue was back when he was small and he and Bakugō had spent a few short months together obsessed with playing house.
It was a heroic household, of course, but the point remains that their most heated arguments had always focused on which of them would get to be the mom.
Izuku had lobbied for the position because his own father was never around, so he didn’t actually know how to be a dad or what they were supposed to do.
Bakugō had demanded the position because quote “moms are badass and my hag’s the most badass, she’d kick all the other mom’s asses and so will I!”
They’d been forced to stop that particular game when teeth had become involved.
So, needless to say, Izuku has always known he was open when it came to possible romantic partners.
But, as with so many other things in his life now, Izuku had never really expected to be in this situation.
~~~
The USJ seems to have been a tipping point in some ways.
Because Izuku can’t help but … notice things after that.
The fall of Aizawa-sensei’s hair.
The line of his jaw.
The way his hands flex and his fingers tangle in the lines of his capture weapon.
The way his smile is a bit too wide and his teeth are just a bit too sharp for human standard, hinting at a hereditary quirk trait of some kind that Izuku is just itching to explore.
The man is grumpy, obviously partially feral, and far softer than he likes to admit.
It’s all so … attractive.
Izuku attempts to abort that line of thought as soon as he registers it.
When that doesn’t work he attempts to redirect it somewhere else instead.
But …
Todoroki is beautiful, the scar, while Izuku hates that he was hurt so badly, adds an intriguing sort of character to the classic sort of attractiveness he has.
But when Izuku attempts to let his eyes drift over the other boy in the locker room, nothing creepy just a casual look over, a tidal wave of disgust washes over Izuku so hard that he audibly gags.
The same thing happens when he makes himself admire Tokoyami’s glossy feathers, or Sero’s smile, or Kirishima’s bare chest.
It’s even worse when Izuku turns his attention toward the girls in his class.
Tsu’s pretty hair, Uraraka’s cute smile, Yaoyorozu’s everything. Even thinking about Hagakure’s cute and bubbly personality is a no go in this context.
All of it makes Izuku want to throw himself directly into traffic the instant his thoughts attempt to turn any degree of romantic or, god’s forbid, outright sexual.
Because those?
Those are children.
Little girls and little boys.
Babies.
Even when Izuku takes an afternoon to stalk a few third years out of a morbid sort of curiosity, nothing much changes.
Yes, Izuku can admire both the cute elf ears and the quirk control of that one dark-haired and obviously shy third year, but that is still very firmly a child in his eyes.
“Well,” Izuku muses to himself with an exasperated sort of acceptance, “guess that settles that.”
~~~
As if his acceptance of his new appreciation and bias toward, technically, physically older people, is some sort of permission, the chat takes off.
Kayama-sensei, while gorgeous, elicits more of a strong appreciation and wonder for her ability to work in heels and some vague worries about back pain and ‘lack of support’ that Izuku tries not to think about too hard.
Mic-sensei has the chat divided; half of them admire his obviously semi-hidden feral energy, while the other half deem him too loud. Everyone agrees that his legs are very very nice though.
After the joint training session with 1B, the entire chat joins in on dunking on Vlad King as often as possible, unimpressed with his blatantly biased commentary.
But when it comes to Aizawa?
Well.
Izuku’s just glad that no one in the immediate area has a telepathy quirk and can hear the absolute chaos the man sows in the chat on a regular basis.
Completely on accident too, much to Izuku’s grief and unwilling sort of admiration.
~~~
Inevitably, the situation finally comes to a head.
Izuku is halfway through yet another test that had obviously been switched out from the standard test Aizawa had given the rest of the class for one of Nedzu’s special hell exams.
And Izuku, exhausted, still healing from his latest accidental S-rank battle while out on patrol, is having a hard time holding onto his hard-won and expertly crafted calm.
He’s been enjoying his games with Nedzu this past year and a half but today? Today Izuku just wants to wrap things up, scuttle back to his dorm room, and sleep the entire weekend away.
But the chat just refuses to shut the fuck up.
Mainly because Aizawa, in a change of pace, isn’t actually curled up in his sleeping bed.
No, instead the man is sitting at his desk, his capture scarf abandoned to one side and his jumpsuit sleeves pushed up to his elbows as he grades papers.
He’s wearing glasses.
Izuku might actually hate him.
Either way, he absolutely wants to bite him.
Izuku has had more than one chat-induced daydream that started like this and involved Izuku spending an exorbitant amount of time nibbling at the line of that scruffy jaw.
The chat narrows in on that stray thought, immediately building on it in ways Izuku normally reserves for the privacy of his room and not in the middle of class.
Izuku’s hand tightens around his pencil.
Banjo begins to wax poetic about the merits of Blackwhip meeting that capture scarf.
En, who had ended up being way more of a pervert than Izuku would have ever thought the quiet man to be, doubles down on the image of Aizawa in his press conference suit, this time glasses included.
The pencil snaps.
Yoichi makes a giggling sort of comment about how he “wouldn’t mind calling that man dadd-”
“That is it!” Izuku’s hands slam down onto his desk, the noise ringing like a shot in the previously silent classroom.
“Midor-” Aizawa blinks, obviously taken aback, concern flashing swiftly across his face.
“I have had it up to here with all of you!” Izuku is too focused inward to pay too much attention to the way the entire class has turned to stare at him.
“Dek-” someone calls for him but Izuku barrels on.
“Yes, I know Aizawa is hot like burning,” he seethes the words out, eye twitching. “Yes, I also think his arms are delicious and he would treat us right, or wrong, in all the right ways.” There’s a strangled sort of noise from the front of the room. “But this body isn’t eighteen yet! So for the love of all that is holy, let me rest in peace until we’re physically old enough for him to actually look at us!”
The chat is, for once, blissfully silent.
Much like the class around him.
Izuku blinks and comes back to himself far enough to realize what he’s just done.
But he’s too exhausted and too old in all the ways that count to be embarrassed by this kind of shit anymore.
So instead he pushes himself up from his desk, grabs his half-finished test, and marches up toward the front of the classroom.
Aizawa, glasses having slipped halfway down his nose, just stares at Izuku wide-eyed, a thick red flush blossoming across his cheeks.
It’s the most off-balance Izuku thinks he’s ever seen the man.
It is also so fucking cute that Izuku wants to throw an actual tantrum.
“Tell Nedzu I’ll finish this up later since we both know it’s one of his,” Izuku says as he places his test paper down on Aizawa’s desk.
Then, unable to help himself, Izuku leans forward and pushes Aizawa’s glass back up and into place.
“The ghosts in my head think you have delicious DILF energy, and I have to agree with them,” Izuku says while maintaining what can only be described as aggressive eye contact with the obviously stunned man. “Please be aware that I will be coming after a date the moment I graduate.”
Izuku is pretty sure that Aizawa isn’t breathing. Instead, the man just sits there, frozen in mid-motion.
The chat immediately bursts out into hoots and cheers, echoed in real time by the rest of the class.
Izuku is pretty sure he hears Kaminari shout something like “Momdoriya”, but he forcefully decides not to acknowledge it.
Izuku straightens up, turns on his heel, and marches out the classroom door.
He can deal with the way he probably just set his life on fire later.
For now, he’s going back to his dorm to sleep.
May the gods help anyone who wakes him up.