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Izuku woke to a slight headache. He rubbed at his head and slowly peeked open his eyes, checking to make sure the sunlight shining through his curtains wouldn’t make it worse — but something was off. The posters placed in his dorm weren’t placed right; his figurines were missing. He sat up rapidly, groaning slightly when it made his head spin.
“Good morning, sleepyhead!” A cheerful, familiar voice cooed, and Izuku’s eyes snapped to the door.
Why is Present Mic in his not-room?
The man is dressed casually, in sweatpants and a v-neck t-shirt, blond hair tucked in a messy bun atop his head, leaning against the door frame without a care as though he normally just would be in Izuku’s room — though this isn’t really Izuku’s room — watching him sleep.
“Sensei, what’s going on? Something’s wrong…”
Because now, when he thinks about it, he doesn’t even remember making it back to the dorms last night at all. He remembers that he visited his mom for the weekend ‘because his mother is chronically ill’, like he always does. He remembers that she was drunk, like she always was. He cleaned up the apartment and took care of her, like he always does. He bought groceries for the week and made her lunch and dinner and packed it neatly into tupperware, and finished just in time to leave at 4 pm on Sunday, like he always does, and then he left to the sound of his mother’s angry screams, like he always does, because nothing he ever does is good enough.
And he stopped at the 7/11 and cried in the bathroom, like he always does, and then he bought his strawberry soda, strawberry pocky, tempura shrimp onigiri and egg salad sandwich so he could stop at the park and eat his sorrows away, like he always did.
Never did he dare buy his proper favorites. It’d just remind him that his mother didn’t love him enough to make them for him anymore, that everything was always on him now.
He doesn’t remember making it to the park.
He doesn’t remember making it to the dorms.
He doesn’t remember making it to the dorms.
“Don’t worry, baby; everything’s okay now. We’ve took care of everything for you.” Mic-sensei is still using the same babying tone, like he’s trying to soothe a wild animal, and strangely, it’s working.
But… “I don’t understand. This isn’t my dorm… Sensei, please — what’s going on?”
Present Mic walks over and sits down on the bed next to Izuku. Without asking, he pulls Izuku into a hug, cradling his head against his chest and petting his hair. “We rescued you from that awful woman, of course. Watching our sweet son suffer each weekend as he takes on that responsibility — well, it’s more than Shouta and I can bear! You simply won’t be going back to her; we just won’t allow it!”
“Someone has to take care of — wait — wait! Son? I don’t — what are you talking about?” Izuku pulls away from Present Mic, eyes wide.
Present Mic still keeps that same calm, cool unaffected expression. “She doesn’t deserve you, so we’re adopting you. You’ll be happier and healthier when you’re with parents that take care of you instead of the other way around.”
“Breakfast is ready,” a deep voice — Aizawa-sensei’s familiar voice calls from another room. “Come eat.”
And… Izuku can’t remember the last time someone made breakfast for him. It must have been years. Probably before he taught himself to use the stove. Despite himself, he feels tears pricking his eyes.
Mic-sensei doesn’t comment on that, instead taking one of Izuku’s hands. “Come on, baby; let’s go eat before the food gets cold.”
Izuku should fight. This isn’t normal, or healthy. He’s been kidnapped, put in some weird twilight zone copy of his room and told he’s being forcefully adopted and he’s not allowed to return to his mother, but instead, instead he obediently follows his teacher to a table in the the kitchen, where a large serving of food is set out for him — unlike at his mother’s house, where he has to take small servings, this is in accordance with what is required because of his quirk; he needs massive amounts of calories compared to the average person ever since accepting One for All.
It shouldn’t make him feel warm. They kidnapped him, he reminds himself. Still, as he sits down to the exceptionally large bowl of miso soup, three servings of fish, a bowl of rice twice as big as his teachers’, and what looks like an entire tamagoyaki, impressively large, where Mic-sensei and Aizawa-sensei seem to only have a quarter of the same size of another one, he feels something in his chest crack wide open, and he’s not sure how to close it again.
“You can have more food if you’re still hungry when you’ve finished; there’s leftovers,” Aizawa-sensei offers once Izuku has started eating.
That makes him feel warm too. Idiot.
Aizawa-sensei and Mic-sensei chat about normal things like what else besides the leftovers from breakfast they’d like to add to the bentos today, and what they’d like to do after work — apparently, a movie ‘as a family’ sounds nice. They talk about introducing him to the cats that are being kept in the bedroom so they don’t get overwhelmed.
It gives Izuku whiplash.
Are they just going to… not acknowledge that they kidnapped Izuku in broad daylight on his walk to the park on a Sunday afternoon? And is he just — is he just going to be like Rapunzel, locked in this place forever? Will they expect him to stop being a hero? Because he’ll run away as many times as he must if that’s the case.
And then — Mic-sensei turns to him, expression deadly serious, and Izuku realizes he must have been mumbling.
“Now, baby. You better not dream of running from us. Things can be so good here, if you’re a good boy. You can keep going to school; you can have some freedoms once you earn our trust as long as you stay. But!” And Present Mic holds up a finger, and Izuku can’t help but be afraid of Mic-sensei for the first time in his life when looking at his face. “If you run away, we will find our baby boy. And after that, I’ll chain you to your bed myself so you can’t ever escape again. I won’t allow you away from us where I don’t know you’re safe.”
And then Mic-sensei’s expression changes lightning quick, brightening as he smiles like the sun. “So don’t run from us, okay?”
Izuku nods quickly.
A part of him still considers it… but… it has been good so far, hasn’t it? And Mic-sensei said he can still go to school, and really… would it be so bad to not have his mother tell him how horrible of a son he is anymore? Would it be so bad to be free of his weekend responsibilities?
Surely, no one can blame him if he wants a break, if he’s tired.
Maybe, just maybe, it would be okay to let this happen. He says nothing, and lets Aizawa-sensei steer him to the bathroom with commands to shower and get ready for school. His uniforms with his name written clumsily inside is sitting in the sink with a towel and toiletries nicer than any he’s ever owned.
He comes out of the bathroom smelling like strawberries and expensive shampoo and cries when he’s given the first homemade bento he’s had in years. And sitting in the little cooler with the bento, he finds at lunch time, is the strawberry soda he had gotten on Sunday.
He drinks it with the bento and the meal is one of the best he’s ever had — because finally, finally, he gets to have a bento at school, just like he always wanted as a little boy, desperate for his mother’s love and attention. A bento meant he had a parent’s attention — finally, finally, he had it.
Maybe, he thinks, as he cries from happiness in the bathroom so his friends don’t see, this really, really isn’t so bad after all. And when Mic-sensei and Aizawa-sensei corner him a few minutes later to check on him because he’s been crying and they want to make sure he doesn’t need comfort — when’s the last time his mother wanted to wipe his tears and hug him when he cried? — he decides this is better than okay, really.
After all these years of absent parents, of angry parents, maybe he wants overbearing, over-loving parents. Did they really do anything wrong if they’re better to him than his mother has been since he was six?
He doesn’t shed a tear when his mother dies a few weeks later. No one tells him what happened. He’s sure it’s his fault for not taking care of her. He knows he should cry, but all he can do is be happy when his senseis produce adoption papers right away. The smiles on their faces are terribly, terribly victorious and predatory. He thinks he should be afraid. Still, he only smiles and signs his name, just like they tell him to.
Izuku doesn’t know what they did to Midoriya Inko. He never will. Really, it’s for the better, after all, if you ask Hizashi and Shouta, anyway.