Chapter Text
He never could’ve gotten away, he doesn’t think.
Even if he hadn’t waited so long at the crosswalk to coo at the old baker’s cat, or if he had ridden his bike to school like his mom always tells him, or even if he hadn’t gone to school at all, like he had the indescribable urge to this morning. He would have gotten caught, he’ll be able to understand after, because he’s a target. He’s been a target. No matter how far he went to avoid them— him—he would’ve been caught eventually.
In the moment though, he’s asking himself all those questions, wondering how he could’ve gotten out of it, with his bottom lip wobbling and stomach roiling with nerves. Why did he let himself get caught? Why did he wait so long at the crosswalk? Why did he choose that day of all days to ignore his mum’s advice? Why does he turn around and smile at the jeer being shoved through the back of his head instead of running?
Burning red eyes flash through his mind as he staggers to a stop in front of his house. His fingers clamp over his shoulder, shadowing the paler hand that was there not twenty minutes ago, but he can’t feel anything other than nausea as he presses down. No fire, no throb of pain. It’s just. There. Hollow, like the headaches that are just hollow pain around his temples but absolutely unbearable. The familiar feelings he knows should be there haven’t kicked in yet. Not past the initial shock wave that pulsed through his skin and rattled him all the way down to the bone, anyway.
He stumbles on the step to his porch, still sluggishly moving forward. His head won’t shut up. Sparks, harmless (terrifying) explosions out of pale hands, and red red red eyes— it runs like a movie film, burned into the back of his eyelids. Every time he blinks, it’s his red door, the cracked strip of paint near the knob. Then darkness and red eyes staring him down, red eyes jeering, red fire and popping and blistering heat too close to his face—
He tries to keep his eyes open. They’re dry and his head hurts even if his arm doesn’t, and he really doesn’t want to have to use the eyedrops that’re in the cabinet. They’re cold and always drip down his face and it makes him feel like he’s crying so sometimes he does cry, and then that makes his mom cry... So he doesn’t— he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want it.
He doesn’t look at his right shoulder, or the hand tightened over it, because he can still feel the burning and the stickiness and the char. But his eyes stay open.
He reaches out for the knob, steps inside, and lets the door quietly swing shut behind him. “Momma?” he calls out as loudly as he dares a step in.
A frown comes across his face at hearing his own voice, but he can’t help how raspy it sounds. Raspy, sticky, like he just finished crying. Was he? He can— he can taste salt on his lips. When did he do that? Is that why his breathing sounds so wet and shuddery? He hasn’t bothered to take his shoes off yet. His favorite red high tops are soaked in mud, and he doesn’t think he could stand up again if he had to crouch down anyway.
“Momma,” he says again, faltering. His voice is softer. He sniffles, a hiccup tearing into his raw throat, and starts paying attention to the tears burning in the corners of his eyes. He is crying. He’s not supposed to cry, not when he doesn’t have anything to cry over. It’s stupid and weak and makes all the other kids at elementary feel gross with him. It’s stupid but his shoulder is really starting to hurt, and Mom isn’t coming.
“Momma, Kacchan—“ Izuku heaves in a breath, already hating how his chest is getting tight and that his head is fuzzy around the edges. “K-Kacchan— he hurt me. Real, real bad, and it— I— you said to tell you when’e did that and h-he did it.”
He’s never said that before.
The realization makes him dizzy, like it physically sent the world off center instead of just his stomach. It also makes him cry harder. Sticky trails of tears and snot run down his face too fast for him to wipe away.
“Are you home, sweetheart? Did you say something about Katsuki?” Finally, his mother appears. She trundles down the stairs, mouth open to say something else, until she catches sight of him swaying in front of the door. She only pauses for a second before rushing over with a frantic look of concern on her face.
“Izuku, what happened? Did you and Katsuki get hurt?”
It’s a little too loud, almost like the big voices angry people in the movies use. The sound echoing between his ears is much less funny than it was then. She kneels down in front of him, somehow not hearing how everything is buzzing and too much too loud too big. She’s smoothing his bangs behind his ears, patting at his clothes like she always does, like nothing’s wrong and a big, sharp feeling isn’t building up in his throat and it’s all just normal.
Soft hands flit over his face, gently brushing curls away, tracing over the bruise on his cheek. It’s as relieving and warm as it is too much too much— he can’t tell if he wants to clutch at her and sob or scream until it goes away. He decides he wants to wrap himself up in her; she smooths over all the aches and kisses them better, she’ll help with the buzzing. Suddenly her eyes flicker to his shoulder. To the charred remains of his school sleeve that’s visible even around his small hand. Somehow, he had nearly forgotten all about it.
“Katsuki, he— did he—“ She doesn’t even finish the sentence. Can’t, maybe. One of her hands is clapped over her mouth now, the other hovering just above his arm. They’re shaking.
“Momma, Kacchan h-hurt— he hurt me,” Izuku finishes for her in a quiet, choked voice. “You said— said to tell you i-if he did it again, and he— he— Momma it hurts.”
“Sweetheart, I— I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so so sorry. L-let’s go to the bathroom so I can fix this shoulder up, okay? I’ll, I’ll fix all of this.”
He had placed the dizziness he felt earlier while she was checking over him. It’s a bone-weary sort of thing, one that crushes his lungs and makes his knees wobble.
Clarity. Relief.
He finally told her. And Izuku keeps telling her, the dam broken open. He blubbers and stumbles over every word, but he wails out how the teachers at school let Katsuki and his friends do all sorts of mean stuff to him. The relief pours into him with every example and description he gives from over the past few years, overpowering the guilt and tears, so he spills and spills and spills everything out of him until there’s nothing left. Even though he thinks Kacchan is super cool, he doesn’t think past the now of how bad the burn feels. (He still can’t really feel it like he should, how the littler ones felt. When he tells his mom this, her face twists up even more somehow and she hurries to call the doctor people. She had him memorize it after the first time he broke his wrist at school, and they wouldn’t tell him the number.)
She murmurs all sorts of sweet, reassuring babbles while he cries (after the doctor people hang up). When he’s finished spilling and she’s finished bandaging, they hold each other so tightly for such a long time that he begins to think they won’t ever separate.
He’s sure Kacchan will get a time out or not be allowed any comics or action figures for a while and he’ll learn his lesson, and then everything will go back to how it was before the diagnosis. It’ll be okay.
In the weeks and months to come, Izuku watches with a mix of despair and fascination as the burn on his shoulder scabs and scars over. Momma and her nurse friends at the hospital keep whispering about how he might be stuck with a vaguely hand-shaped scar for the rest of his life. That it’ll “always bring up terrible memories and that he might not be able to handle seeing it.”
He looks at it every morning when he gets ready.
It’s covered by bandages during the first few weeks of healing, but he catches glimpses when they get changed and when he gets dressed.
The first week that he doesn’t have bandages on it all the time and he can move the arm good enough to write again, Mom tells him that he’s not actually going back to school yet. And they walk to school anyway, even though she says to leave his backpack at home. He puts his hand on his hurt shoulder— almost mimicking the way he gripped it when he came home that day— as him and Mom go to his principal’s office. She yells a lot, slides some forms over on the table, and overall seems very scary for a half hour or so. His principal signs some papers at the end of it under Mom’s eye, pale and sweaty, and then they leave the school.
You left for the last time, Mom had told him, a shaky smile bearing down. She squeezed his hand. You’re not going back. I have some lawyer friends that are going to take care of it, sweetheart. They get ice cream instead of going home right away. Izuku has a scoop of black cherry and a scoop of chocolate, and Momma gets scoops of vanilla and matcha.
He also has his hand on his shoulder when Auntie Mitsuki comes over. His mom is mad then, too. She’s been a lot madder since crying in the bathroom and after the doctors mumbled about nerve damage and colored scarring and that they couldn’t cover a phys-ee-cal ther-something.
She was really, really mad when Uncle Masaru came by with Auntie the next day. And now they’re all here, their usual roles flipped, with Izuku hidden on the stairs to listen. The adults have a conversation at the kitchen table— one that starts with yelling and ends in at least two of them crying. All four of them have ice cream together after the Bakugos calm down.
Auntie likes cookies and cream. And Izuku likes Auntie, even if she’s Katsuki’s mom and his mom said Katsuki isn’t allowed to come over for a while.
Eventually, he stops absently touching the scar on his shoulder when he has to listen to yelling or when he gets upset over something. It takes a few months to get there. It takes more than a few concerned glances from his mother. As it is, when Mom decides to move them closer to her job and into a new school district, Izuku doesn’t press on his shoulder. He didn’t really like the ‘temporary’ online school anyway, and he doesn’t have any friends to stick around for (other than Kacchan, who he hasn’t seen for a while), so he celebrates with her.
When a key comes through the mail, Mom tells him that they officially own their new house now! He throws himself forward into her arms and hugs her as tightly as he possibly can to squeeze out all the nerves dancing around his stomach. Tears flow over his cheeks, a grin lights up on his face, and he doesn’t let himself think about his scar for more than a second.
He’ll be away from his old teachers, away from Katsuki and the other kids, and he can start all over again. They’ll be settled in right on time for his birthday, too! At least he won’t be missing anything for that celebration. He hasn’t really had a party since he started wearing the red shoes and had to leave preschool. Not since then.
His shoes slap against the slick pavement, each hard push-off punching another gasp out of his chest. The sound is covered up almost completely by the sharp torrents of rain beating down all around him. His lungs are throbbing, squeezing and pressing and tight and too hot. He trips when he tries to push his soaked bangs out of his eyes and almost goes down.
But he doesn’t know if they’re still following or if they can see him through the gray sheets— if he goes down now, he’ll stay down and he can’t afford to stay down. Not with the rain stabbing his skin raw and the rocks settled at the bottom of his stomach and the shuddering, coughing way he’s choking in air. How he’s leaving a trail of red behind him that’s quickly being washed away. If he stumbled right into the ground and didn’t get up, or if they took the chance to come back, he wouldn’t stand a chance. The storm would wash up all the evidence his momma always tells him to make sure to leave behind.
Just when he thinks his legs might give out for the last time, and he won’t be able to stagger up to his feet again to keep running running running running, a vague shape rises in front of him, looming up out of the storm. A playground, he thinks, though his heart is still pounding too hard, too fast in his chest to really think right. He can find some muted colors past the gray, at least, and the outline of some roofed-in parts. A refuge for until he doesn’t feel so foggy.
It only takes a few minutes to lug himself up a little ladder and curl under the little roofed part. Only a few more after that to convince his lungs to work, then to sit back against one of the wooden walls. There’s a slide right across from it he didn’t notice when he climbed up there. He can see the rain good from back there, through the opening for the slide. It’s nice, he guesses. He can’t pull his gaze off it.
His head is— is heavy, it’s really heavy, he doesn’t— he can’t really move. But the rain is nice.
Time passes after that, he thinks. When he comes more into himself, it’s because he can hear a disturbance in the storm’s path to the ground. Somebody moving through it, boots clomping through the wet playground turf and clothes slogging behind. He just has enough mind left to wiggle closer to the opening. Or maybe not enough mind, actually. Is this a bad decision?
The back of his shirt doesn’t want to peel off the wall. The jerky movement makes the ‘somebody’ zero in on him. They call out a few times as they get closer, and when he doesn’t answer, the clomping gets faster.
“Kiddo! Hey, are you by yourself up there? Can you hear me?” a wheezy voice says to— well, probably Izuku. “It’s raining pretty hard. Where’re your parents?” It’s coming from right below, its owner probably standing at the bottom of the slide.
Even if they were trying to look up it, they wouldn’t be able to see him past a vague blob. Can’t see the nearly black-looking hair plastered to his neck and forehead, can’t see the bloody scrapes following his shins and knees, can’t see how he might have been crying. Maybe. (He doesn’t actually know, but his eyes feel puffy.) He doesn’t shift from his spot. Doesn’t even look up, only curls further into himself and hopefully tucks himself farther away from the opening again. He’s still kind of trying to blink back into life, make all of his bones and muscles and everything work.
“If you don’t wanna go home right now, that’s okay, but we should really get out of the rain,” the voice coaxes. It stays gentle, though. Not mean or sharp. “Neither of us need a cold, amirite?”
A shiver passes through Izuku’s body without him meaning to. After so long out here with the wind and water battering him, there’s a chill set so deep into his bones it might never come out. He needs to move. But he can’t. This little hunched position he has, his aching knees folded up in front of him, arms tucked too tightly over his head, is the only thing keeping him together.
“We don’t have to talk or anything if you don’t want to, but I’d feel a lot better if you were somewhere safe.”
The man down there is cold too, isn’t he? He has to be as soaked as Izuku is. But he wants Izuku to be safe. He’s a stranger who’s putting himself in a storm to check on a random kid he heard crying. He carefully un-rolls himself, the bleeding scabs on his joints creaking in protest, and half-pokes his head out into the open.
A tall, wiry man greets him there. He is sitting on the bottom of the slide, long legs awkwardly tucked under him on the too small surface, and it looks like he’s trying to shield his phone from the rain. Straight pieces of hair, darkened to a brown-ish color, flop around the man’s shoulders and stick to his neck. He has some of the longest hair Izuku has ever seen on a guy.
He doesn’t seem dangerous, though. Not like he’d kidnap an eight-year-old, at least. Probably. If anything, he looks like one of those posh model people that don’t understand they can’t approach a kid that isn’t theirs. But he sounds nice? His voice is soothing and warm. And he doesn’t look like he’s going to go home if Izuku stays in the play structure.
The man looks up and catches Izuku’s eye. His own widen, maybe shortly flicking over the bruises on Izuku’s face and arms, but a smile rests on his lips. It’s the kind that means he won’t ask questions, Izuku thinks, like the nice workers at the corner store. A little sad maybe, but not pressing. Those kinds of smiles are always relieving to see.
“There’s a store right down the block we can go to, if you’d like!” The man doesn’t move to grab Izuku, and he doesn’t sound annoyed yet either. “Small place, cozy. If I can get my phone to work, you can call your mom or dad while we’re in there.”
He stares down at him and wraps his own arms tightly around himself. He knows the store; the one with the nice workers who had a blanket for him the last time he ran through a storm. He does not quite know what cozy means. He’s suspicious. Just maybe not enough to care what happens after the ifs and buts. He’s got backup plans— fail safes, that’s one of Mom’s vocab words— if something goes wrong. There are the people at the store, the flower shop further down the way with red shoes sitting by the door, a few hidey spots he knows around this area, and if all else fails, he’s small and quick and you really can’t see more than meter in front of you right now.
He could claim he worries over it and thinks up all those possible getaways right there, while he’s hiccupping and staring and the smiling man is squinting back to see him. He’d be lying, though, so the thought doesn’t stay long. He always has a plan, Mom made sure of it after they moved. After he couldn’t get away. He just does. It doesn’t do anything but make him a little less wary of weird situations now. If he told his mom that, she’d probably be upset.
Izuku doesn’t say any of this. He does study the man for a moment longer though, letting his gaze linger over the dark blocky shapes in the man’s ears, before nodding. He doesn’t take the slide down, even though the man is hurriedly standing up already, but swings himself over the side of it so he won’t have to scoot past the other. His knees are unprotected by his shorts and already scraped, so the impact makes his thin scabs open again.
“Oh,” the blond mumbles. Whatever it was for, or whatever he saw in Izuku’s face, he shakes himself out of easily enough. “Uh— I’ll take that as an ‘okay’, little dude. My name’s Yamada Hizashi, for the sake of our newfound friendship, and the store is only a couple minutes away.”
He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to have to talk about why it hurts everywhere, or why he was playing in the rain in the first place, or who made him all bruised and bloody today. Mom’s going to ask, the worker people are going to ask, but he just won’t answer. He’s already decided not to. He’s gonna get out of the rain and wipe the snot and tears off his face, and he’ll move on as if he never thought about staying at the top of the slide forever, even if they ask and the nice man worries about him, and his teachers look at him weird again.
But he’ll do it, go home and get off the slide even though he doesn’t wanna , so the man goes home and stops worrying about a random crying kid, Izuku decides. That’s the only reason.
He almost opens his mouth and almost ducks into a bow. Stiff manners are deeply ingrained in him after all, but he manages to catch himself. Nice to meet you, my name is Midoryia Izuku. Thank you for your help. He knows better than to give a stranger his name. Well— anyone his name. He’s not proud of how his throat clicks and chokes him up every time he has to introduce himself. It’s handy, though. For when there’s a stranger.
Lightning arcs down, hot and blinding, over the top of the school building next to the park. Yamada’s back is to it.
My mom’s name is Midoryia Inko and I can’t find her. Please help me find the nearest police station or hero agency, sir.
He knows where he is. He knows his mom is inside their house. He knows where to go. He just doesn’t want to. The flash of thunder in the distance is expected, coming far too soon to not be unsettling, and Yamada jumps straight into the air when he hears it. He mutters something about hating storms under his breath, looking in a random direction as if searching for the thunder, before shaking himself off and offering a hand out. It’s bigger than Mom’s, more callused with thinner fingers, and without the mole on its thumb. Strangely, it’s almost like an offer, not a demand.
Izuku’s eyes light up. Despite every logical thought and the sourness swimming in his stomach, he grabs Yamada’s outstretched hand. That’s as far as he’ll go. He’ll hold a hand, let that warmth calm the aches in his fingers, and run away from Yamada’s side if he needs to. His grip won’t be tight, and Yamada’s isn’t either, so he can twist out if he needs to.
Yes, this is fine. This way, he can peer up at the blocks in Yamada’s ears too. The two set off in the direction of the convenience store without much more fanfare. Izuku eventually gives up on trying to figure out what the blocks are to pay attention to where they’re going.
The rain pelts down around them, seemingly growing thicker and sharper for every step forward they take. Soon enough, Izuku can barely see through the gray sheets pouring over the streets. The wind howling in his ears doesn’t help much either. Neither of them can see much other than the glow of streetlamps and traffic lights, but he only has to tug on Yamada’s hand one time: when they walk too close to the street and he stumbles off the curb. There aren’t many cars or bikes along the road right now. No amount of windshield wiping or hazard lights could help in these conditions. Yet, Yamada helps him right back onto the sidewalk with plenty of frantic apologies. Izuku may have tightened his grip on Yamada’s hand after hearing that care flood into his voice. He doesn’t smile or talk or anything, of course not, but the sour swirling in his stomach settles a little.
After what seems like hours, he finally spots a familiar neon sign. The bright kanji advertising new flavors of snacks flicker until one goes out entirely. Yamada breathes a heavy sigh of relief and steers them to the doors. If Yamada’s steps become a little faster after a bout of thunder attacks their ears, Izuku would politely not mention it. A cheery bell chimes as they push past the torrent and step inside. The lights are a little too bright, a little too garish, compared to the dullness of everything outside.
“There we go!” Yamada laughs, using his shoulder to wipe some of the rain off his face. “Now we can warm up and call your paren— er, Mom or Dad, kiddo? Or both, I guess?” He glances down questioningly. Izuku just blinks up at him.
Yamada opens his mouth. “Sir, please step away from the kid.”
Izuku frowns in confusion, until Yamada’s eyes find someone over his shoulder. He drops Izuku’s hand quick in favor of raising his own in front of himself in a placating gesture. “I didn’t mean any harm—“
“Of course not.” Izuku finally gets a clue and turns around. A skinny teenager with the store apron folded over at their waist is staring them down— no, actually, just Yamada. They're just staring at Yamanda. They only check Izuku over with a glance before coming back up. “But this isn’t your kid, is it? And you pulled him through a thunderstorm with you.” Without waiting for a response, they reach forward to tap Izuku on the top of his head. “C’mere, you’re soaking wet.” Izuku runs— he walks over to them, calmly and surely. His hands naturally find their shirt while he shuffles behind them.
So what! Maybe they scared him for a second, acting like that and glaring like they’re trying to explode Yamada with their mind. And, to be honest, they have the same “mom voice” his actual mom does, which he really didn’t want to go against, even if he wants to explain that Yamada isn’t an enemy. They’ve babysat him a few times (let him sit behind the counter and spin in the chair after school until Mom could pick him up) which is apparently plenty to gain a mom voice. He can’t help but hide behind them, clutching to the ties on their apron like a kid.
The two adults exchange a few more vaguely terse words, Yamada even trying to catch Izuku’s eye to smile at him again. He just eeps and ducks out of view.
He can’t handle peeking out when Yamada does end up walking out. Making a mess, water still dripping off his clothes in buckets, no umbrella in sight. The bell chimes behind him, a gust of wet wind rushing inside, and then he’s gone.
The store is a small one, the employees really just a group of six or seven people that take turns stocking shelves and running the counter during their shifts. They collectively taught Izuku all about not telling strangers anything, how to be safe when he walks home or plays outside, what to do if someone says something weird to him. It started shortly after Izuku moved to the area, when a woman tried to take him to her car while he was picking out chocolates for after dinner.
One of them stepped in, he can’t remember which one specifically, and then it just became a habit to drop by sometimes. Now, the two workers there right now do ask about the bruises and cuts and the gum ground into his hair. He knew they would, but he still shifts in the spinning chair uncomfortably. Trying to think about how to tell them without telling them.
After a minute of clearing his throat and trying not to choke on the words, he releases his lips from between his teeth to answer. There were a few people at school picking on one of his friends, he decides on.
Friend. He didn’t even know the girl’s name. He still doesn’t. She had pretty, sparkly blue skin and gills on her neck. Those kids were making fun of her underneath their patterned umbrellas after breaking her plastic one. When Izuku stepped in, already shivering and muddy from splashing in puddles, the girl ran without a glance backward.
Good for her, really! If he would listen to his mom more often, he would be her. Sometimes he wonders why he can’t be. Tells himself to run away next time, grab a teacher or make a distraction that doesn’t make his entire body sore for the next few weeks. He still knows he won’t. He doesn’t think he has it in him.
This playground is really meant for the preschool right next to it, or maybe for the little kids at the elementary down the street too, but Izuku keeps going back anyway. His favorite spot to be in is next to the huge blue slide’s entrance. It’s the only corner of the play structure that’s boxed in with little plastic walls. He didn’t know any of that until after he came back, though, bright pink rain boots on and water fuzz clinging to his hair.
Most of the other “walls” outside his box are actually bars, many that branch into things to swing and climb on. He doesn’t really like to play on the swings, or use the climbing bars, or seesaw, or anything else. Not when there’s no one else to play with. Playgrounds aren’t very fun anymore, he doesn’t think. Yet, he keeps coming back. Yamada seems to be doing that too.
The second time, Izuku sees Yamada before Yamada sees him.
The blond, and yeah, Izuku can tell for certain that Yamada is blond now, has a bag tucked under his arm and a leather jacket hugging his shoulders today. He strolls past the playground area with only a glance over its equipment. The reusable bag he has is marked all over with stickers and smiley faces and smudged pen. It’s well loved, Izuku thinks, when he’s staring at it with something warm in his cheeks. There’s a carrot peeking out of the top.
Is that what Yamada was doing when he caught a kid in the rain? Grocery shopping? Maybe he lives in that stretch of nice houses behind the playground. There are a few neighborhoods lining the streets back there. The man continues on his way, never noticing the curious green eyes following him.
Izuku sees Yamada more often after that day.
He stays inside during the next week’s continual downpours under the watchful eye of his mother, but the sun has to brighten past the clouds sometime or another. He goes to the playground to calm down and nurse a few tears the Monday after. It’s a beautiful afternoon: pleasant warmth in the air, a cool breeze, barely any blood on his knees.
Mom really likes weather like this. She’ll probably have the windows and backdoor open when he comes home, the nice smell of sugar and roasted chicken filling the house.
Right now, he sits at the top of the slide for once, fingers loosely draped on the handlebars, while he stares out into nothing. He doesn’t really have to think about anything up here. Not his quirk— lack of a quirk— or the kids at school, or the kids at his old school, or anything else he doesn’t want to think about. That’s nice. It’s really, really nice.
Then Yamada passes by some twenty or thirty minutes later. He’s on the same side of the playground as last week, heading the same way, with the same leather jacket on. This time, he catches sight of Izuku and pauses. He doesn’t have a bag today. He tucks his hands into his pockets almost cautiously as he slows to a standstill. It doesn’t seem like he knows he's being watched back yet. A long, tense moment passes. Tense for Izuku, at least.
Then he ambles over, lips easily curling upward. “Hello again. You come here often?” His voice is just as bright and joking as it was last time. It’s almost comforting, how the genuineness in his words wrap around Izuku’s mind. “Maybe you go to school here, yeah?” That one must be a joke. The school in front of the playground is a preschool. Yamada must be joking, right? That’s why he’s smiling? Except his face is tight around his lips and brows too. His steady gaze passes over Izuku and the— the cuts and things on him.
Right. Of course. The cuts and bruises are usually what people are concerned about, before they see his shoes and how he talks about every quirk except his own.
Izuku tilts his head in a so-so gesture, own expression neutral. Probably. He isn’t smiling, and the other kids say he looks a little too blank when he isn’t smiling sometimes. How is he supposed to talk to adults again? Is he still considered a stranger? Strangers don’t come back, do they?
Yamada hums, settling down at the bottom of the slide. He turns to look up the slope of it this time instead of sitting sideways. His smile doesn’t waver at Izuku’s silence. “Sorry for coming back to annoy you— if you’re annoyed, that is,” he continues weakly, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “That cashier sure thought so. Are you two, uh— friends? Family? Close?”
Izuku nods and holds up a finger. Friends. Better friends than he and the kids that made some of his cuts and bruises, better friends than Izuku and the gilled boy. Yamada’s eyes keep drawing back to the one nasty cut on his cheekbone. Izuku can cross his legs under him and tuck his arms into the gap his legs made, but he can’t hide his face very well. Yamada doesn’t say anything about it though, not like his teachers do. They always feel more mocking than concerned, but this not-stranger just seems happy to talk to ( at ) Izuku without mentioning the bruises.
He rambles on, occasionally asking a question about Izuku that can be answered with fingers or a yes/no motion. After some time has passed and the sun is a little closer to the horizon, Izuku is offering grunts and other little noises as well. He’s not relaxed exactly, though his entire body isn’t threaded with tension either.
The mostly one-sided conversation fades into a lull eventually, Yamada finally running out of things to say. That’s when Izuku takes his leave. He swings himself over the edge of the slide much like he did the first day, stands up and walks over to Yamada just like the first day, and offers a quick smile. Then he’s jogging past the edge of the playground, following the streetlamps that aren’t all quite lit up yet, and running home.
Their pattern continues. It becomes a habit, then a vague schedule, then a fact of life. One of those simple things Izuku stops bothering to wonder about after a while. Izuku can usually spot Yamada first since he gets to the park right after school ends most days; so he can choose whether or not Yamada spots him back. Somehow, for some reason, he always ducks his head out, or sticks his legs over the side of the slide, or slowly starts tossing mulch to the ground.
The weather gets cooler over the weeks, he switches from shorts to pants on the weekends, and still their pattern continues. Mom knows about their conversations— she worries a lot over it— so Izuku doesn’t let himself feel guilty for keeping Yamada a sort-of secret. It’s nice. He likes Yamada’s voice and funny hair, and the husband he’s mentioned once or twice. Yamada makes him feel warm.
He talks about his hobbies and job a lot. After he said something about having a ‘work partner’, Izuku pieced together that the “cat loving snob from work” and “endearingly frustrating roommate” is said husband. Yamada talks a lot like an adult who doesn’t talk to little kids much, so Izuku writes down all the big words he uses to ask Mom about later. He’s got a whole notebook dedicated (that’s one of the big words!) to words and definitions. It’s really nice. Maybe nicer than letting his mind go blank and letting his fingers absently trace over the bumps on his arms.
He even starts speaking when prompted to. After routine visits like this, Yamada couldn’t possibly count as a stranger. The reasoning doesn’t always work, and sometimes there are days where all Izuku can think about is how he’s keeping his quirk a secret from Yamada, but the tightness in his throat won’t show up most of the time. He can talk and joke and tell Yamada about his day or about a new hero’s debut.
That’s nice. It’s better than what he had before.
Then one day, he stumbles to the playground later than usual. It’s a Wednesday, Izuku remembers belatedly. He hates Wednesdays. He has a bloody nose, sticky tear tracks running down his face, and a colored slip of paper burning through his pocket. They hit the edge of the playground boundaries at nearly the same time that day, and since he's staring so intently at the ground, he doesn’t see Yamada coming.
“Oh hey there, little dude,” he exclaims, reaching up to steady Izuku by the shoulders. “Are you alright there? You— oh.”
Izuku throws his head down again, chin slamming into his chest, with fresh tears rising in his eyes. He can’t see through them anyway, so why did he look up? Go away go away go away. The hands don’t move from his shoulders. “S-sorry, I’m sorry.”
His throat clicks, and he bites down so hard on his tongue that the taste of copper fills his mouth. It’s all ruined. Yamada has seen the other bruises and scrapes, all of which could be put down as a kid’s clumsiness, and some of it was from that. But this, this can’t be explained away. He already has to talk to Mom about the note in his pocket from his English teacher. And what Hana-sensei said! Now this fragile little thing they had is all ruined too.
“Hey, hey—“ Yamada crouches down, sliding his hands to either side of Izuku’s neck. “Look at me, please? It’s okay. I can help, kiddo. I’ll help. Look at me and take a big breath.”
Obediently, Izuku does take a gulp of air, the breath shuddering in his chest— was he not breathing before?— and chances a glance through his gnarled hair. Yamada’s eyes are dripping concern. The tightness is back around his lips, but it’s more in concentration than that silent type of pity. “Great job kiddo,” he says gently. “Wanna take another big breath? Here, I’ll do it too.”
They suck in a huge breath together, Yamada purposely sounding like a whistle, and the dizziness creeping into Izuku’s head recedes somewhat. He doesn’t laugh, even though that’s what the funny noises are for, but he breathes a little easier for them. After a few minutes of this, the dizziness is gone completely. Little sobs still hiccup out of his mouth. He pulls his shirt up to wipe his face, feeling unsteady on his feet and mostly ready to break into sobs again. He’s so tired and his nose hurts. He doesn’t want to do this anymore. He doesn’t want to have to give up Yamada because he knows about the stupid bullying thing.
He just wants to go home.
“We’ll get you home, alright? Promise,” Yamada murmurs to him, words soft and rounded and hiding a lilt of surprise at the ends. He starts to pull himself to his feet, staying half-bent over to be closer to Izuku’s height.
Was he saying that out loud? He didn’t mean to say that out loud.
“Do you usually meet your mom somewhere? Or do you know how to get home?”
Yamada stays oblivious to the vague thoughts flowing into Izuku’s mind this time. Does he really not care that he has to comfort Izuku like this? Does he not care that Izuku’s too soft to deal with those kids himself? Kacchan cared. He cared a lot. Snippets of almost ideas, almost worries, almost cries whip around his skull too quickly to catch on to. The colors start to blur around him, but he has to breathe or Yamada will get upset, and the pain forms a pulse of its own, and there’s tacky blood smeared across his cheeks now—
So Izuku brings them to his house. He can’t think of anything else to do. He meets his mother just at the door, where she’s pacing and frantically pulling her shoes on just inside. Overall, Izuku doesn’t look very happy or healthy. Yamada apparently doesn’t look as kind to Mom as he does to Izuku when there’s dried blood on his fingers. And the school would have already called her about how he skipped his last class of the day, then didn’t come home, as she knows. She wouldn’t know that he had skipped a little more than the last class, that his last period teacher would’ve been the only one to care that he was absent, and that the man at her door she’s never seen before didn’t kidnap her son.
He probably should have expected his mom to scream and pull the toaster to her with her quirk. He also probably should have expected Yamada to scream in turn and duck to avoid the ancient toaster being thrown at his head. Izuku probably should have expected a lot of things, and he usually does try to consider all the possibilities before doing something stupid, but all he does now is burst into sobs and throw himself at his mom.
She continues to loudly threaten the blond man kneeling on her welcome mat even while holding him close to her chest.
“This is Yamada!” he has to shriek as more kitchen appliances fly towards them, choking on his own breath and too-long hair. “Yamada , Momma! Yamada! He— h-he— helps , he helps— stop it !”
The kettle falls at his feet, and Mom is shaking. No one's yelling anymore but she's shaking, and she pulls Izuku away from her chest just slightly to look down at his face, suddenly switching from screaming to ignoring Yamada completely. Her eyes are all blown wide and puffy underneath, cheeks flushed red, and she’s breathing as hard and erratically as Izuku is. They cry together and clutch at each other’s clothes, her pretty green eyes darting across his face to take in every detail.
Feather-light, trembling fingers come to brush his bangs away from his brows before cupping his cheeks. The motion makes his tears fall a little slower, has his breaths come in a little more calmly. Whatever she finds must satisfy her, since she picks him up in a fluid motion and rises to her feet. He clings onto her chest like a koala with his face buried into her neck. Burnt sugar and the smell of the hospital rises up to meet him.
She tucks an arm under his thighs, his short legs swinging near her waist, and bars her other arm across his back to support her child’s clinging. She’s already turning away from Yamada, as if he isn’t there anymore.
Other than the quick, furtive glance in the man’s direction, of course. Mom’s eyes rake over Yamada nervously, taking in every rumpled detail in one look. Izuku simply relaxes in her hold and curls his arms underneath hers. “My apologies, Yamada-san,” she says, voice clipped and hiding the shakiness living inside her fingers. She strides into the kitchen area. “There are guest slippers in the cabinet at your right. P-please— please join me at the high-rise. When you’ve composed yourself.”
She doesn’t set Izuku down once she starts gathering stuff for tea. The closest she gets to it is when she raises her hand to pull the kettle back to her. A pleasant hum passes through her chest when they hear Yamada yelp that makes Izuku giggle. He’s eight now, and independent, and he can take care of himself. But he doesn’t complain. Or pull himself out of her shirt whatsoever. Her breaths are a little too shuddered and shallow for his liking. Once the pot is on the stove and nice glass mugs set out, Mom carries him to the bathroom. They have plenty of practice with the medical kid, so he’s cleaned and patched up just as Yamada stops fumbling around with the guest slippers.
It only takes a few minutes for him to smooth his hair down and slip out of the main hallway afterward. The two are stepping into the kitchen’s other entrance at the same time. Yamada carefully takes a seat at the counter/island table facing into the kitchen, something anxious and pained on his face. He’s a very fearful man, Izuku has noticed. Any confrontation and he just— blanks out.
“So.” His mom sets the two mugs of tea on the counter, one in front of him and one in front of the chair she takes across from him. Izuku shifts in her hold to turn halfway towards Yamada, but other than that, stays silent. He’s still trying to ignore the tingly feeling the alcohol wipes left on his face. “My name is Midoryia Inko,” Mom says (somewhat sheepishly to Izuku’s ears, maybe seriously to anyone else’s), resting her hand on Izuku’s back. “You have been speaking to my son?”
Yamada startles and straightens up in his seat. He’s as stiff as a tree. “Yes, ma’am. Uh, Midoryia-san. I found him in that storm last month, and we’ve crossed paths since then. I swear I’ve meant to speak to you sooner than this, but I didn’t... I wanted to make sure Izuku-kun was okay first.”
The two of them trade stares that Izuku doesn’t quite understand. Mom’s eyes go wide, then shrink almost guiltily, and then some realization crosses her face and she’s suddenly looking at Yamada in a new light. He’s seen enough of her mood changes to catch the mix of gratitude and disappointment in the press of her lips. Because of all that, he’s only a little surprised when they trade nods.
Mom just says, “I know he can be... well, he protects himself, and then sometimes he forgets to stop with new friends. He told me a little bit about you, though, so I know you didn’t mean any harm. I sincerely apologize for… for earlier.” Mom readies her eye on Yamada, and Izuku can only guess what expression she’s making based on how pale his face becomes. “But if you ever stroll into my house with my son’s face covered in blood again, I don’t think I’ll have it in my poor heart be nearly as accommodating before getting the story out of you.” As Izuku glances at her face, she flashes a dim smile. “We’re clear on that regard, yes?”
The relief that then pours from Yamada is so thick that Izuku is tempted to try to touch it. A vigorous nod disturbs the relief cloud. Mom nods back. Her smile loosens, as does her grip on her son. “Wonderful. I’m glad we could understand each other, Yamada...”
“Hizashi,” Yamada supplies helpfully. “Yamada Hizashi.”
Mom takes a drink of her tea. “This is Izuku. He said he hasn’t spoken to you much yet, so forgive me if you already knew his name. He does prefer for you to call him just that.”
Izuku blinks owlishly in turn. Huh. He hadn’t told Yamada his name, has he? It just… wouldn’t come out when he tried. How long have he and Yamada been talking again?
Her voice steadily morphs out of the one she uses for telling people off while he’s wondering about it. “I thank you for sharing some kindness with him this last month, truly.”
Yamada risks a warm glance at Izuku. “Of course, ma— er, Midoryia-san. He’s a rather kind child himself. You must be proud.”
“Yes, my Izuku is going to grow up and help a lot of people.” Mom’s tone grows wistful, bittersweet almost, until she turns back to her cup. “He has a habit of making friends with just about everybody, so please, again, forgive my, um. Caution earlier.”
She takes a last sip of her drink before sliding Izuku off her and setting him down in the chair she was using. Her hands aren’t wringing together despite the mortified flush in her face, but that’s only due to the mug she’s still gripping like her life depends on it. Izuku quietly chews on the apple slice he was slipped as she makes her way around the counter.
“Well, Yamada-san, I believe you and I should get to know each other. We didn’t meet in a very, um. Appropriate way— but there’s no reason to not continue properly.” It’s said as more of a command than a question, really. And if he hears it, Yamada surely does too. “Though I fear I may have a leg-up in that department due to Izuku,” Mom murmurs thoughtfully, cradling her mug close to her chest. The final decision Yamada doesn’t know as such is set out even while she heads to the living room. Bits of her usual softness return to her demeanor with every step. Yamada is quick to scramble along after her.
She offers him a seat on the couch where Izuku can still see them both from the kitchen. A quick, kind smile tugs on her lips. “How are your cats doing?”