All For Some

Chapter 52: Third

Izuku only woke up as his shoulder was nudged and whoever did that was too stubborn to stop even after Izuku waved his hand and turned to the other side. Eventually Izuku gave up and opened his eyes. He had to protect them with his hand from the shine looking up at Eijiro's bright smile.

"Good morning! Congrats on sleeping without burning the bed."

"I am going to hear about that for a long time am I not."

"We aren't going to tell anyone who wasn't here," Eijiro said and smirked, "but Hitoshi said two to three years at least."

"So, until graduation," Izuku responded and looked around. "Where is everyone else?"

"Oh, they are already downstairs. You were so deep a sleep you slept through the rest of us getting up so we decided to make breakfast before waking you up."

"Oh, that's new," Izuku said as he got up to a sitting position. He glanced up at Eijiro who was still standing next to the bed and staring at him with a strange thoughtful look.

"Is everything okay?" Izuku asked. Eijiro tilted his head continuing to look at him.

"I... think I should ask that from you. Last night... I get you worry a lot about people, at least some people but that... What I am trying to say is, are you okay?"

Izuku closed his eyes as tears tried to leak out. He had not been asked that question enough by enough people.

"No," he responded honestly, "but it's been a long time since I was."

"Wh... Is that one of the things I shouldn't ask about."

"It... was."

Izuku pulled his legs against his chest resting his chin on his knees as he drew a shaky breath. Even with all the muscles he had built in more than a year of training he still had the uncanny ability to make himself seem tiny and fragile, especially in the soft pyjamas he got for everyone. No one that didn't already know him would have guessed they were one wrong move and about two seconds from a grave by being in the same room.

"Ei," he said, "sit down."

Eijiro took a few seconds to process Izuku's response, but eventually he sat on the edge of the bed without saying a word. Izuku inched closer without changing his position and turned to rest his back against Eijiro's. Things might be easier if he didn't need to worry about what his face was doing and as he leaned against Eijiro's bare back he was reminded how grateful he was for every single person that was comfortable with him withing an arm's reach. He took a long time gathering his thought enough to talk coherently.

"You know how people feel about my quirk, do you know how they think about quirkless people, especially in our generation?"

"Eh, not much. I've heard people say some pretty nasty things, but I've never had quirkless person in my class or anything."

"I had, me. My quirk only appeared when I was in the middle school. From the age of four till then people thought I was quirkless, and in lot of their eyes there is nothing more worthless. I've heard more than one people refer to quirkless people like apes or monkeys, something that fell behind in evolution. For kids that's an easy target and for schools someone that can be sacrificed if it means not causing trouble to someone with strong enough quirk to become a hero in their eyes."

"I..." Eijiro had difficulties finding words. "You are talking about Bakugo?"

"Would you believe we used to be friends as kid, at least to a point. Then I got diagnosed quirkless and things went down from there. I tried to hold onto what little friendships I had had, but he would rather torment me and use me to let off steam whenever he was annoyed at anything, which was most of the time. It's not like anyone would risk their star student's future as a hero to help a quirkless kid. With dad working abroad the only people who cared enough to even have a proper conversation with me in ten years were my mom and one single teacher. Somehow, I still wanted to help people and be a hero for the longest time. I dreamed about getting a quirk every day."