It has been a long, long time since Izuku has slept this well. It can’t last, he knows it can’t last, but he sleeps like the dead (too soon?), and wakes up, bleary and half-aware at the sound of his alarm. It’s his day-off alarm, and it takes him a few moments to remember why, and remember why he’s not in his own room.
Yes, he did just try to kill himself… a little over twenty-four hours ago, before freaking out and calling Aizawa before he could carry through with it.
Well, not freaking out, but… He certainly backed out of that, and he can’t find it in himself to not regret that. It’s… the past twenty-four hours have passed like a dream, but they can’t last, he knows they can’t. He’s stuck in a guillotine, blade hanging high over his neck, just waiting for it to drop and cut through this fantasy. For the moment, Aizawa and Yamada and Eri are putting up with him. Soon, they will stop, they will realize that there is nothing good that will come from propping him up for however long they can stand it. All he can offer them in return is hurt—there’s not even enough of himself left to give them, not after he’s thrown himself upon hero society’s altar over and over again for the past thirteen years.
There is nothing of him left, and soon, they will realize that. They will realize that he is a black hole, taking and taking, unable to offer anything in return.
It’s enough to make him want to curl up and never leave this bed, never leave this room. If he just… disappears, just never comes out, then they’ll… give up, right?
As if summoned just to prove him wrong, someone knocks on the door. The rapid hits, the little rhythmic pattern, betray Eri’s presence before she even speaks.
“Hey Izuku! You awake?” she chirps, her voice upbeat and bouncy.
He takes one breath. Another. Takes a third, holds it, summons the leftover shreds of his perseverance. “Yeah,” he replies, and it’s a little flat, but he doesn’t sound like he’s trying to just curl up and die, so he’ll take the small win.
“You wanna come make breakfast with me? Dad’s still in bed and Pops is just getting started on his hair.”
“Doesn’t that take him like, forty-five minutes?” He has distinct memories of mornings, of the handful of times he slept over in Hitoshi’s room, and he remembers exactly how long it takes Yamada to do his hair.
“There’s a new gel that came out… a few months ago? Eight months ago? And it sets a lot faster and holds a lot stronger than his old stuff!” Eri replies, and Izuku doesn’t know how to name the emotion he feels at learning that, he just knows there’s something wounded and hurt and learning that information pokes it, stabs at something deep in his chest.
“Ah,” he vocalizes, rolling over so he’s laying on his back and throwing his arm across his eyes. He waits there for a moment before dragging it across his face and sitting up. “I’m getting up.”
“Great!” And she sounds way too upbeat for… six thirty in the morning. He can hear her footsteps as she walks away from his door, and her humming is loud enough for him to hear for a few moments before she’s too far away.
With her gone from his door, he groans, letting the air out from his lungs until he can’t force any more out, and then he inhales, a large rush of air filling his chest. If he focuses on his breathing, on the sensation of air filling and leaving his chest, focuses on the expansion and depression of his ribs, the way his lungs push at tight muscles and sore spots, then he can move.
As long as he can breathe through it, he can make it through it.
One more inhale, and he throws the blankets off his body, sitting up and throwing his legs over the side of the bed. The next step is standing.
He does so, sliding off the bed, feeling his weight transfer to his feet. The room is carpeted, soft and thick and green, and the irony of that is not lost on him, that the guest room he’s staying in is green, green like him.
A small, child-like part of himself thinks that, maybe, it’s meant for him.
It’s the same child-like part of himself that desperately chased Katsuki for years, so he viciously shoves it down and takes one step forward.
And then another.
He picks his phone up off the bedside table and drops it in the pocket of his sweatpants. It’s stuck on Do Not Disturb, semi-permanently, because he’s honest enough to admit that he can’t stand seeing what people say about him in the group chat, he can’t stand seeing the messages sent to him by Ochako and Tenya and Yuuga and Tsuyu and… his mother.
Each message he sees comes with a fresh new lash of self-loathing guilt, and sure, he hates himself, but he’s not inherently a masochist.
It’s not like he has the energy, anyways, when it’s all he can do to keep breathing.
Breathing.
That’s something he can do.
Inhale, exhale, take another step.
This time, his inertia manages to take him out of the room, down the hall to the bathroom. It’s a large house, with two bathrooms on the first floor and one on the second. One of them is the master bath, attached to Aizawa and Yamada’s bedroom, and that’s the one Yamada’s doing his hair in.
The guest bathroom is the one Izuku finds himself in, staring at himself in the mirror. He avoids his reflection, as much as possible, except for when he’s doing his makeup. His makeup did not make the trip to this house with him, however, so there’s not much of a reason for him to look at himself.
He does anyways.
He looks in the mirror, and he’s struck by a sudden and intense flash of heat in his chest.
Hatred.
It rises from his gut, climbing its way up his esophagus, clawing its way up his spine and working its way into his lungs before it’s crawling up his throat and curling up at the back of his neck, so thick he chokes on it, lips pulling back and baring his teeth as his hand tightens around the edge of the counter, gripping so hard it begins to hurt, the cold stony surface biting into the palm of his hand.
He looks at himself, and he hates.
For a moment, it sweeps him off his feet, consuming him like a wildfire consumes a forest, blazing hot, tearing through him and burning up his skin. It chars him, scours him, until his skin is tight and there’s nothing left but the hatred.
Something else rises in him, electric and buzzing, beating alongside his heart.
One For All is a temporary balm, his subconscious activation enough to pull himself out of his spiral, giving himself something physical and immediate to focus on. It sings, sings within his skin, sings through his veins, rushing sweet and solemn like sheets of rain through his being. Sparks dance across his skin like liquid light, like his very presence is enough to illuminate the room.
It’s enough to bank the flames, enough to give him a moment to breathe, to inhale in the power humming around him and exhale, exhale out his self-hatred.
Later, it will return, it always does, but for now he splashes water on his face, braces himself on the edge of the counter, refuses to look in the mirror, counts his breaths.
He’s been in here too long, he thinks, after he’s stood there, quirk humming through him, breathing and counting and breathing and counting, for a few minutes. He splashes water on his face again, and deactivates One For All, feeling it curl back up around his heart like a snake, curling in around a warm rock.
The fabric of the towel is rough against his face as he dries it off, and then he’s stepping outside, walking to the kitchen where Eri’s already pulled out everything they need to make pancakes.
“There you are!” she smiles, grin spreading from ear-to-ear as she turns and catches sight of him.
Something aches in his chest at the sight of that.
He does not care to name it.
“Yeah,” he replies, doesn’t flinch at how flat his voice is, now, at how little energy he can summon.
She deserves better, but this is all he has to give.
“Alright, so,” she says, gesturing him over, and he takes the steps, feet carrying him over to the counter. She grabs him, her hand wrapping around his wrist. His skin tingles, even though there’s the layer of his sleeve between his skin and the palm of her hand. She pulls him closer, closer to the counter. “I was going to mix up the batter, and you could watch the stove. I was thinking bacon, maybe, too? And we have blueberries and chocolate chips, which do you prefer in your pancakes?”
“Ah… blueberries,” he replies, and she nods, once, sharp and serious.
“Good choice. Blueberries now outnumber chocolate three-to-one.”
She releases him, sending him over to the stove, where he’s to babysit the bacon, while she’s busy stirring the pancake batter. He’s not a terrible cook, although he wouldn’t trust himself in this state. Babysitting bacon, however, is well within his capabilities at the moment, as is keeping an eye on the pancakes as they cook on the griddle.
Together, they have breakfast ready and on the table by the time Aizawa and Yamada walk out to them, complete with coffee made.
“Oh my gosh!” Yamada gushes when he sees the table. It’s always amusing to see him with his hair up but missing the rest of his hero costume. “Pancakes! Thank you so much!”
“Mm,” Aizawa grunts, nodding, as he and his husband sit down together. Eri insistently ushers Izuku into the chair next to hers (although this time he’s on the end, so that he’s not going to have to worry about bumping elbows), and as he sits down to eat, something feels… a little lighter, in his chest. It’s like some valve has turned, just a little, just enough to relieve some pressure.
“Thank you for making breakfast,” Aizawa finally says, once he’s finished two pancakes, some bacon, and his first mug of coffee. He speaks as he stands, carrying his mug into the kitchen to pour his second coffee.
“Yeah! It’s really good,” Yamada adds, sticking another bite of pancake in his mouth. And maybe Izuku didn’t do anything more than just make sure the food didn’t burn, maybe all he did was flip the pancakes and pull them off the griddle, but…
Well, something warms in his chest at being thanked, something gentle and delicate, gossamer like butterfly wings.
It’s gone as soon as it appears, but it leaves behind the faintest of afterglows, the ghost of warmth in him.
That afterglow fades, freezes over into something numb and apathetic as Aizawa beckons him off, out of the dining room, leaving Yamada and Eri to clean up. He doesn’t protest, because at this point, he can’t—he’s already staying in this man’s house, eating his food, he’s already put him out enough, there’s no point to trying to protest or anything like that.
Instead, he just follows Aizawa out to the living room, his veins freezing over until there’s a wall of ice between him and the rest of the world.
By the time they’re sitting down, he thinks that, maybe, no pain will be able to reach past the wall.
(That’s a lie.)
(The ice is so cold it burns.)
“I’m going back to work today,” Aizawa says, and that’s okay, Izuku expected that. He’s—not sure what comes next, not sure whether he’s being shooed out or ushered onto the next person or what. “I… don’t want to treat you like a child, because you’re not, but there’s some general guidelines and boundaries that Hizashi and I have agreed on, at least for today. After today, we’ll have the whole weekend to figure something out further, but for today, I want you checking in via text at least once every hour. You know the general boundaries here, but I’ll repeat them: our bedrooms and bathrooms are off-limits, but you’re welcome to anywhere else in the house. I’m not going to tell you that you can’t leave the house, because that is a line I don’t want to cross. I am going to ask that you please text me if you do decide to go anywhere. There’s also a spare key on the hook next to the door you can use.”
Izuku blinks, and it takes a few moments of spinning wheels before his mind finally start processing. “You’re letting me stay here while you’re at work?”
“Yes,” Aizawa replies. “I am.”
“Oh.” He blinks again, once, twice.
“There’s one more thing,” Aizawa continues. “You should contact your mother. Phone call, text, email, whichever way you’d prefer. But, after classes are over today, I will be calling her myself to inform her of your current situation. This is non-negotiable: she needs to know.”
Izuku nods. He… gets it. He’s sure he’ll feel worse about this soon, when the distance wears back off and he tunes back into the moment that he’s vacated. This apathy never lasts for long enough.
Aizawa squints at him, eyes moving fast as he looks Izuku up and down. “You’re dissociating right now, aren’t you.”
“Maybe so,” Izuku replies, because what of it? This is how he’s managed to make it through the last few years, dissociation and denial and destruction.
And Aizawa sighs, and the stab of guilt is strong enough to reach through the fog and pierce his heart. See what he means? It doesn’t last.
It never lasts.
He’s just hardwired to feel strongly, wired so well that he can’t even dissociate properly.
“Sorry,” he mutters, the response automatic and meaningless on his lips.
“Mhm.” Aizawa closes his eyes, briefly, before opening them and standing. “I’ll write everything down for you.”
That’s probably a good idea… The chances of him remembering this conversation are somewhere around fifty percent. Aizawa turns to leave, but pauses, and reaches out, his hand coming to rest on Izuku’s good shoulder. And once again, there’s a layer of fabric between him and another human’s skin, but it sends an electric tingle through his flesh, the area just underneath Aizawa’s hand buzzing and fizzing with something Izuku can’t explain.
“I need to go finish getting ready,” Aizawa says, but his hand lingers for a moment, and Izuku knows he’s staring at it, staring at Aizawa, knows that his eyes are wide and betraying him, but the fog lingers and he cannot care.
Except this moment cannot last forever, and the touch is gone as Aizawa walks away.
Izuku stares after him, watches his back.
It’s a familiar sight; he cannot begin to count how many times Aizawa has put himself between his classes and danger. Izuku’s returned the favor before, physically, stepping in to save his teacher when no one else could, but this is a different kind of stepping in, a different kind of saving, one that Izuku’s never learned.
Aizawa is stepping between Izuku and Izuku’s own demons, in a way few have before.
Toshinori was one of them—up until the very day he died, he had picked Izuku up, had carried his heart, had helped him fight his demons.
If asked, Izuku would tell someone that the day he heard the news of Toshinori’s death was the day his decline began in earnest.
He half-drifts for a few minutes after that, thoughts spinning around his head like a snake eating its own tail. Eventually, he comes back to the present, feels himself sink back into his bones and tune back into the world around him. There’s a last-minute commotion as the family of three finish getting ready, and he’s rolling his shoulders and popping his neck and dragging himself back into existence but the time they’re rushing through the living room on their way out.
“See you this afternoon, Izuku!” Eri calls, waving at him. He waves back, feels a smile tug at his lips, and he lets it, a brief flash of affection cutting through his hollowness. “I’ll be taking the train back here after my classes are over!”
She’s the first one out the door, in a whirlwind of enthusiastic eighteen-year-old, followed by Yamada, now fully dressed in his hero costume.
“I’ll see you this evening,” Aizawa says, as his finishes lacing up his boots. He speaks this like it’s fact.
“Yeah. See you,” Izuku replies, and it feels like he’s sealing a pact, signing a contract he hadn’t quite been aware of before this moment.
Aizawa leaves, locking the door behind him, leaving Izuku truly alone for the first time in over twenty-four hours.
Immediately, the silence is too loud.
Of course, it’s not truly silent. There’s the buzzing of lights, the hum of the refrigerator, a bird chirping.
He just cannot hear other people, so at the behest of the itching under his skin, he stands, a violent, frenzied motion, and he’s halfway to the guest room he’s occupying before remembering that his phone is in his pocket.
So, he pulls it out, and since Do Not Disturb is still on, he does not see any notifications as he pulls up his music player and selects a playlist at random.
And then immediately selects another one. No, he does not want to listen to Kyouka’s music, not right now.
The morning passes in a haze. He barely remembers to check in with Aizawa, and that’s only because there’s a bright yellow sticky note stuck to the coffee table with that reminder on it, and he wonders when that got there. Morning turns towards afternoon, and he finds himself shifting from reading fanfiction for the escapism to pacing up and down the hallways because his skin itches but it’s not a physical itch and, despite the pit in his chest and the exhaustion in his bones, there’s something in him driving him to move, to do, but he doesn’t know what to do.
Or, well, he does. The sticky note stuck to the door of the room he’s staying in is bright pink, but still contains Aizawa’s distinct handwriting, reminding him that he has until this afternoon to call his mom first, because whether Izuku’s called or not, Aizawa will be.
At some point, probably while he’s on his lunch break, Yamada texts him to tell him he’s welcome to any of the food in the fridge for lunch—there’s some easy-to-prepare stuff, or stuff he can just eat cold. Izuku gets the notification for this text, and the notification for every single thumbs-up emoji Aizawa sends him in response to his maybe-a-bit-more-often-than-hourly check-ins, because maybe he’s figured out how to let Aizawa, Yamada, and Eri’s messages through but not anyone else’s. Of course, they’re still coming through, they’re just not sending notifications.
Eri also texts him, letting him know that he’s perfectly welcome to the two leftover pancakes, and that he’s also welcome to some of her chocolate milk, and the apple crisps are in the cupboard above the refrigerator.
(She’s never lost her fondness for apples and apple-related foods, and briefly, with a bittersweet pang of nostalgia, he wonders if she remembers the cultural festival of his first year, if she remembers the candy apple Izuku, with Rikido’s help, had made for her.)
He eats one of the pancakes, and that’s about all he can stomach, but he still sends her a thank-you text anyways.
Afternoon comes around, and he’s eaten, and remembered to drink a glass of water (after a very pointed reminder from Eri), and the time until she comes back is ticking down, ticking away to nothing.
He retreats to the guest room and opens his mom’s contact information.
He does not press the call button.
Instead, he holds the phone in his hand, staring down at it, taking in the characters of her name and the rhythm of her phone number and the little heart emojis he had put in her contact name years ago, back when they still had a good relationship.
The house around him is quiet as he stares down at his phone, held in his one hand, hovering over his contacts, an echo of yesterday morning.
Here, the difference is that he only has one hand, and that hand is holding his phone.
There is no room for him to hold his own destruction, as well.
Now, theoretically, could he put his phone down, and walk out of this house, and kill himself? Yes, he could. He knows Musutafu and Tokyo and the surrounding area like the back of his hand. He’s worked more-than-full-time here for years, patrolling and fighting and protecting, so he can name, off-handedly, way too many bridges and rooftops that would work as final jumping off points. Hell, he could return to his own apartment and hunt down his own bottle of painkillers. He could pull out one of his razors, remove the blade, and slit his own wrists. He could hang himself, he could walk out into traffic, there are a million and one different ways he could end his own life.
In practice, though, he has one hand, and that hand is holding his phone with his mom’s contact information pulled up.
It would take much less energy to just hit the call button than to stand up and walk out and kill himself.
His phone screen is cool and solid against his thumb as he presses the button. He turns on speaker and sets the phone on the bedside table, letting himself flop back down on the bed, laying spread-eagled on it.
The phone rings, and rings, and after several long, long moments of she’s not going to pick up, is she?, she picks up.
“Izuku?” she says, voice tentative, and something snaps in his chest.
His voice is almost steady, only cracking once or twice even as tears well up and start falling, tracing their way down from the corner of his eyes into his hairline, some of them finding their way into his ears, and they almost tickle, but he ignores them. “Hey, mom.”
“Izuku, baby, what is it?”
He blinks, and swallows, his throat unexplainably closing up.
(It’s not unexplainable—it’s emotion, sheer, overwhelming emotion, choking him.)
“I—” he begins, but his voice stops, halts him: that’s not right. He didn’t have the words in the right order, so he tries again. “I, I, I’m, fuck.” He scrubs the back of his hand over his eyes. He can’t see clearly, and that doesn’t matter right now, but the motion is familiar.
“What’s wrong?”
“Hold on, hold on, I just—” He sticks his knuckles in his mouth and bites down. Not hard, but enough to sting, enough to ground him, to pull him back to the moment and pull himself back together. “I’m… Not hurt. Physically. This isn’t—this isn’t one of those calls.”
“Okay,” she says, and he tries to ignore the way the sheer relief in her voice hurts.
“I’m not…” He trails off, takes a breath and sighs it out. “I’m not okay. I’m not okay, mom.”
He stops, for a moment, and neither of them speak.
He’s the one to break the silence. “I’m… I don’t know how to say this.”
“Just tell me,” his mother says. “Please. However you need to. I’m listening.”
“I almost killed myself yesterday morning.”
It tumbles out in a rush of words, leaving his lips like they’re burning coals that he touches and flinches from, before they can burn. And yet, they linger, in the air, hanging above his head, waiting to drop back down and burn him if they’re allowed to fall again.
His mother holds them, now.
The silence hangs, like his words, and he’s the one to break it, again.
“I called Aizawa,” he says. “I called Aizawa. I was—I was about to—but I. I called him. And—”
He stops, swallows the blockage in his throat, the thickness that he clears out which comes back moments later.
And his voice is thick with tears. “I’m staying with him. For the moment. So. I’m… I’m okay, for now, I’m safe.”
His mother’s shaky breath is picked up by her microphone, so he hears it, he can hear the shaking in her voice as she speaks to him. “Okay. Okay,” she says, repeating the word, finding a platform to stabilize herself on in it. “Okay. That’s—that’s good to hear. Okay. Do. Do you have… So you’re… You’re staying with Aizawa.”
“Yes,” he replies. “And Yamada and Eri.”
A pause, and he thinks his mother is thinking, is sitting at her desk in her home office and thinking about what to say next, how to handle this live grenade that Izuku has just handed her.
“Is there… Okay. So. Moving forward… have you made any plans for… recovery?”
“N-not… not… not yet,” he replies, scrunching his eyes closed and sighing. “But… I think that’s… coming soon.”
“Good,” she says. “That’s… good. So… you’re safe, right now? Staying with them?”
“Yes.”
He can hear her take a shaky breath over the line. “Good. Okay. I… Okay. I just…” She takes another breath, and he swears, he can hear her fighting back tears. “I just… please, be honest with me, Izuku. What do you… What do you want, out of… out of your recovery. Your future. What do you want?”
His lip stings where his teeth catch it. Words escape him, completely, and he throws his arm over his eyes. His recovery, she’s saying, as if that’s an… as if that’s an option for him, a possibility. What does he want from his future, she asks, when the very fact he couldn’t see a future for himself is why he pulled out that bottle of pills in the first place? He still can’t. Even if he gets through this crisis, it’s just a temporary stop before the cycle of hero work and ending friendships and self-destruction begins anew.
Apparently, he’s been quiet too long, when he hears his mom’s quiet “Izuku?” coming from the speaker.
“Yeah,” he croaks. “Still here.” And he is. He’s still here. For now. Still alive, still breathing.
He takes a deep breath. Maybe he’s imagining that he can hear her crying, or maybe she really is. “I don’t know what I want,” he whispers.
“That’s okay,” she says, even though it’s not. “That’s okay. You have time. You have time to figure it out.”
“I just,” he stops, the words slamming to a stop somewhere in his throat.
“You just… what?” his mom prompts, her voice soft and hesitant.
“I just don’t see a future for myself,” he whispers.
The sound of his mother’s sobs make him sick to his stomach. Guilt eats at him, but it’s not the only thing: his chest aches, because he can’t see a future where he wants to see one.
He’s not ready to give up, and it scares him, reaching through the fog of depression and exhaustion, exactly how close he was to doing so.