●~Not All There Anymore~● |BEING REWRITTEN|

|8| Didn't Expect You To Love Me Anyways

"I told you." The short boy pointed out, jabbing his finger at the blonde. "And you can let me stay there. If anyone finds out, I could be put in foster care  and we've both heard stories about kids in foster care, especially teens! Kids are picked for pretty quirks, and teens never get adopted either way! And if they do, half of them are abused! I don't wanna end up like that, Kacchan. Just let me stay there for a few months, and then I'll pack my bags and leave. I just need some time to get everything together." Izuku looked up at Katsuki, who had decided to resort to a last ditch attempt.

"What about the dorms? Can't you just move back in?" Izuku looked at the boy with a 'you know why I can't do that' look. And he did. If Izuku moved back into the dorms, Siomachi would have to sign him in, which meant becoming his legal guardian, and she certainly didn't check out in all the boxes. If the school found out, so would the police and childcare. And then he was stuck in foster care.

"Fine, nerd. But on two conditions, and there will be no changing them." Izuku nodded without hesitation. Katsuki held up one finger. "One. You tell me what she does to you, and if I think it's too bad, you leave. Same goes with self harm. You start hurting yourself, I'll make you get the hell out of that house." Izuku nodded, tugging his jacket sleeve further down over his wrist. Katsuki held up a second finger. "Two. We fix things between us. Believe it or not, I miss being friends with you. It was dumb of me to ruin it, and after Auntie Inko.... well, I just want to help. Got all that nerd?" Izuku teared up slightly and sniffled before jumping onto the other boy, latching on tightly.

"Of course Kacchan! Oh god, I thought this day would never come. You really wanna be friends again?!" Izuku met Katsuki's gaze, smiling at him. Kacchan wants to be my friend again. He wants to fix things. Maybe the universe is done with me. Maybe I can survive just a few months, and have a fresh start. I can survive this.

Katsuki let out a low laugh and ruffled the boy's curly hair. "Yeah, nerd. Let's just focus on helping you through this, okay? We should probably get back inside though, eyebags is gonna think I murdered you." Izuku let out another giggle and grabbed the male's hand, dragging him back back to the classroom with a -real- smile on his face.

For the first time, Katsuki saw how fake the other smiles had been. And not just since his mother had gotten sick. Since they were kids, when Katsuki started to hurt Izuku instead of protect him. He knew all those smiles since they stopped being friends were fake, not truly happy, because....

This smile? This real, absolutely euphoric smile? It did something the other ones didn't.

It made his face light up the entire world.

●~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~●

"How in the everliving fuck are we supposed to figure out how fucking acid could adapt to better defend racoon eyes?! It's acid, for crying out loud! It can melt straight through skulls, I think she's well protected!" Katsuki continued his rant, yelling about how stupid the entire project was. They had started with Mina's quirk first, and had found it near impossible to figure out how her quirk would adapt. The entire thing was absolute chaos so far.

Mina was using her quirk and nearly melting the table while showing off to a muttering Midoriya, who was currently scribbling in his notebook, Katsuki was screaming about the project and at Jirou, Jirou was making sarcastic remarks and calling Bakugou an angry pomeranian, and Yaoyorozu was pointlessly trying to defuse everything.

Several times Shinsou stared at them in disbelief, and turned to ask one of his partners if this was really how 1-A acted. He was met with affirmatives, and wondered how Monoma saw them as a threat. They were all incredibly dumb and crackheaded.