Work Text:
Izuku tapped his pen on the edge of the table in frustration, the tip clicking frantically in and out. He sighed and after a moment laid his head down on the table stiffly, tense and upset and feeling it in every cell of his body.
“What’s wrong.”
Izuku shifted slightly but didn’t pull his head up.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
He mumbled it into the page, ignoring the probability that he was getting ink smears on his cheek. A hot flush on his cheeks greeted the words as they left his mouth.
“Why not?”
The response was even.
He closed his eyes, slumping slightly but still wound around that tight coil of everything that his insides were wound around. He was feeling a deep sense of relief that it was Shouto sitting across from him and not any of his other friends. He loved them so so much, but if he heard Ochako or Tenya try to give him a bolstering speech or tell him something like “Don’t be ridiculous, of course you can.” or even a simple “I believe in you.” right now he was pretty sure he was going to scream. He would have definitely cried. He really really didn’t want to get kicked out of the library again.
He just. Didn’t have it in him to listen to something that was obviously not. True. Even if it was coming from a kind place he couldn’t take any sort of mindless encouragement. Because that’s what it would be. Automatic. Thoughtless. The sort of thing that someone says because that fixes the problem of your friend being sad right now but doesn’t take into account the repercussion of what’s being said.
Shouto was different. He didn’t push Izuku out of his slumps. He sat in them with him. He knew what it was to be pushed and pushed and pushed and the strange breakaway that happened after. It wasn’t the same. Izuku would never in a million years want to compare what his friend had gone through to his little tantrum he was having but there was still a sort of understanding. It soothed him, just a little, letting his friend see this. See him.
“I can’t…” Izuku raised an arm over his head to gesticulate in a way that made him hope that no one else was watching their table. “…write.”
Shouto said nothing. Izuku could almost feel the weight of his slow blink on the back of his neck.
“Yagi-Sensei looked over my drafts and wants to help me edit them and put something together to submit to a publisher.”
“Okay.”
Shouto hummed. Izuku heard him take a drink of his iced-coffee-toffee whatever that he almost certainly wasn’t allowed to have in here. His nose was getting squished against the pages and he was pretty sure the last sentence he had written (something like “She considered thoughtfully and thought about what the boy before her was thinking.” probably, or something else equally trite) had been imprinted on his forehead so he sat up again, feeling faintly ridiculous.
Shouto set his cup down, eyes trained on Izuku, waiting for him to continue.
“I’m not ready. I don’t have a complete project, I don’t even have a complete outline. Shouto… He’s going to come into that meeting on Wednesday wanting to look over my manuscripts and I’m going to have nothing to give him because I don’t have anything to give.”
His words twisted desperately at the end, bearing more meaning than he had meant to let slip, leaving him feeling something like a flayed fish being inspected at a market.
Shouto exhaled slowly.
“I don’t understand how you can always look at yourself and never see anything you’ve actually done.”
Izuku had miscalculated, Shouto was slower to come to his defense against himself, it was true. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t. It just meant he was usually more well informed when he did. It was a dangerous combination, especially since Izuku always did this. Forgot about it until moments like these.
He sniffed miserably, unwilling to give up his point.
“I just. I don’t want to disappoint him. He’s done so much for me, I’ve never.. I’ve never had someone tell me that what I’m reaching for wasn’t anything more than dreams and dust. I don’t want that faith he put in me to be something he regrets. I already disappoint myself every single day, I don’t know if I could take it if I made him feel that same way.”
He was trying valiantly to suppress the quaver in his voice. He was failing. Shouto’s jaw twitched. Izuku kept going, rushing to get the words out now.
“But what if he’s wrong? Because I keep reaching and reaching but everytime there’s nothing there and then I try again and there’s still nothing and I feel so small in the face of it all. I can’t help wonder if maybe this isn’t what I’m meant to be doing at all. If I’m wrong, steering off the wrong path and unable to orientate myself enough to find the right one. It’s. I want to help people. What am I doing with this? I’m not making anything. Not really. It’s just air and words and any one can do that really. Why should I think that I’m so special that I deserve attention when I do?”
Izuku’s gaze skittered all over the room as he spoke, unable to meet Shouto’s unwavering look, feeling too fragile to admit to being seen. His breath caught raggedly in his chest.
“Is it Bakugou? Do you want me to steal his lunch money for you?”
Izuku sputtered.
“What?? No.”
He finally looked at Shouto’s face, taking in his quirked eyebrow that added to the skeptical air he was giving off.
“I could. You know he never touches the campus food so he has to use cash whenever he wants to get something.”
Izuku’s mouth twitched unwillingly.
“Todoroki. No. Don’t mug your boyfriend. Kaachan has been… fine”
It was even true. Things between him and Katsuki had been getting better recently. Less charged. Civil almost.
Shouto shrugged in mild acceptance and leaned further back in his chair.
“Usually when you get like this it’s because Bakugou has been giving you a hard time again.”
Izuku huffed, feeling strangely aggrieved.
“No one’s said anything. They don’t need to. It’s obvious.”
He gestured at the mostly empty notebook before him as an illustration.
“I’m not doing anything. I haven’t written anything actually worth showing anyone in over a month. I’ve barely written anything at all. At a certain point I’m just perpetuating a sunk cost fallacy right? When does it get to the point where I cut myself off and say enough? When do I walk away and do something actually worth doing?”
The words tasted bitter on his tongue but he couldn’t dismiss them. He loved writing, of course he did. But he couldn’t dismiss all the other paths in front of him that he had been ignoring for so long.
He was stellar at statistics, he enjoyed it too. Numbers made sense in a way that was always satisfying to complete. His grades in every subject, really were good enough for him to pursue a career. Some were even great. They had to be for him to afford to be here. Yuuei was a prestigious university, the scholarship programs were cutthroat.
He could do anything. He should do anything. There was so much potential in front of him it was like a swirling morass, sitting on his chest, slowly drowning him with all the cracks it made. Pulling him in a hundred different directions but taking him nowhere. Wearing his skin thin with the effort of trying to hold all the people he could be.
Still, his feet kept on tugging him back to the high-ceilinged old writing department with the tacky posters for poetry contests and guidelines for script submissions. To Yagi-Sensei’s office with the cracked open window that he had jammed open and didn’t want to admit he couldn’t figure out how to close so Izuku had done it for him when the weather turned cold, fidgeting the clasp loose from where it had been jammed when the man had stepped out for a minute to talk to Aizawa-sensei about something. To his own stack of notebooks, painstakingly lined up along the bottom row of his college-provided bookshelf. The worn and faded covers having stood the test of time, but just barely.
He didn’t want to walk away from that, didn’t know if he could. But if he could be better served elsewhere. If he could do something with himself that made a difference. A real difference. Didn’t he have a responsibility? Didn’t he…
“Izuku. I think.”
Shouto paused, nose crinkled in consternation. His mouth twitched minutely, words caught in the throat and then released moments later, after observation.
“I think that you forget sometimes. That you need to live your life for you. Not anyone else.”
That stung a little.
Not the words themselves, but what they called back to. The reminder of a conversation. An old one. Between two first years, lost and unsteady and so raw against the world that they couldn’t help hurting each other when they had collided. It had helped, sure. It had been amazing. Izuku wouldn’t give up a single day he had known Shouto for anything in the world, but there were a lot of ways they had gone about things wrong. Done harm where they had tried to help. Made assumptions.
Izuku pushed past it, not wanting to dwell in the unintended jab, but instead follow it to it’s intended meaning.
“But.. what I want to do is help people.”
Shouto blinked.
“You do, though.”
And.
Izuku didn’t know how to respond to that.
Not when Shouto so obviously and earnestly meant it. Not when-
Very quietly, he said.
“I don’t think I’m good enough.”
It felt like a plea and a concession. He didn’t know what he was asking for. Shouto took another sip of his drink. Izuku was starting to suspect the cup was actually empty but he didn’t have any way to prove it.
“Okay. So?”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to be good enough.”
Shouto took a longer sip of his coffee this time. He closed his eyes for a moment. His nose scrunched again.
“That’s... not really something I can help with.”
And that was. A relief. It was why he was talking to Shouto now. He didn’t want to be convinced that he was good. He didn’t think he could be right now. On some level he understood that what he was feeling about his own skill might not be entirely true, but he didn’t really care to examine it. The question wasn’t if he was good at what he does. That wasn’t what he had needed to talk about. Or well he did. But it wasn’t what had made him feel like an overfull waterballoon. Izuku rubbed his face, hopefully scrubbing off those pen marks.
“I don’t need you to.”
“Oh. Good.”
They were quiet for a long moment.
“Does Kaachan know that you offer to mug him to make people feel better?”
Shouto’s mouth quirked in a small smile and he took another sip of his drink, very clearly not answering the question.
Izuku laughed, incredulous. He shook his head. He was glad that the two of them were happy together. Shouto deserved that. Even if it was really weird from an outside perspective.
“He’s always offended that I don’t go through with it.”
And that tracks with Kaachan.
Izuku rolled his shoulders out, working through the tension stored in them. He should visit the campus weight room tonight. He’d been neglecting his usual routine and he could feel it. It would help him sift through the simmering pot of anxieties that still sat in the pit of his gut. Yeah. That would be good.
“Thank you, really. I needed that.”
He smiled.
“You’re a good friend, Shouto.”
“You’re just saying that because you think I don’t offer to mug you too.”
Izuku cackled. The sound rang out and he tried his best not to worry over who he might of disturbed.
“You’re literally rich.”
Shouto shrugged.
“You don’t need to mug anybody.”
“I don’t see how that factors into anything?”
Yeah, Izuku thought, pushing aside thoughts of deadlines and mentors and the weight of the world heavy against his spine. He thought maybe this could be okay for now. Nothing was actually solved. But maybe that was okay too.
Shouto turned his phone around to show Izuku a text thread between him and Katsuki, where the last several texts had been Katsuki repeatedly daring Shouto to come out and try to mug him because he’d be ‘ready’ and ‘waiting to mush your stupid face into the ground just try it halfy’. Izuku read these diligently before looking up to meet Shouto’s serious gaze.
“I love him.”
He said unwaveringly, his face as still as stone, before turning the phone back around and typing something in response. Several quiet buzzes came from his phone a moment later, all in quick succession.
Izuku closed his eyes, and he felt. Okay.