I wish ff had tags like ao3 so that none of y'all get triggered.
-o0o-
Climbing the stairs, Shouto thinks.
Shouto always thinks, every moment of every day. It is the only reason he has stayed alive this long.
He doesn't plan on staying alive much longer.
'This will be the biggest slap in the face Father ever gets,' he thinks, pushing open the metal door to the roof of the Endeavor Agency.
'I kind of wish I could be there to see his face.'
Someone is standing on the wall lining the edge of the roof. The person is visibly shaking, wearing a burnt, and oddly enough, shiny, gakuran identical to Shouto's own.
Shouto's mind goes blank for the first time in a long time. Before he knows it, his hand has encircled the wrist of the person, who has begun to lean forward.
The person turns their head, revealing a tear-streaked boyish face that looks too young for a middle schooler. Too young to be attempting suicide.
'Not that I can talk.'
The boy stumbles backward, falling off the wall and into Shouto's arms. The boy is shaking a lot harder now, it seems.
"Hey," the boy rasps, righting himself. He places a hand on the wall, as though to say, 'This is my right, my place, don't take it away.'
"Hey."
The boy's eyes are red and puffy, face blotchy and lips chewed to hell and back. He'd clearly been crying for a long time. His hands tremble, forming fists as he looks down in what appears to be shame.
"What were you doing?" Shouto knows it's a stupid question, it's pretty damn obvious what the boy was doing. The boy appears to agree, raising a single eyebrow and leveling him with a tired gaze.
Shouto can relate.
"What does it look like?" The boy's eyes widen and a hand flies to his mouth. His gaze flickers back and forth, from Shouto, to the edge, and back to Shouto again.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry, that was so rude of me please don't be madIdidn'tmeanto-"
"Hey. It's fine. It was a stupid question anyway." Shouto raises his hands, feeling like he kicked a puppy. Tears welled up in the boy's eyes as he fidgeted.
They stand in awkward silence for a minute, then two, then three. Shouto's internal clock ticks down to when his father will begin to look for him, wanting to go home and train until Shouto has emptied his lunch and can no longer stand.
"Well, if you'll excuse me, and I hope that you don't try again, I'd like to jump now," Shouto states, placing a leg on the wall and beginning to stand. He inwardly cringes at the phrasing, but it's too late now. Not that it will matter in a minute.
Nothing will matter in a minute.
Shouto has calculated the fall, this building is fifty stories high. There is no possible way that he will not die on impact unless a bystander uses their quirk.
Thin arms encircle Shouto's waist and he stumbles backward as the boy pulls at him. Unfortunately for the boy, that means he falls on top of him. It couldn't have been pleasant, considering the amount of muscle weight Shouto has.
Shouto rolls over and off the boy, who sits up with a grimace.
"Sorry for making you fall, but… I can't just watch someone die," the boy mutters, almost unheard over the wind. He's biting his lips, turning away from Shouto.
"You just attempted suicide. Surely you can understand my… desperation." The boy settles him with another deadpan stare. It looks unnatural on his face.
"Yet you just stopped me?" The boy cringes yet again but doesn't hastily apologize this time. He looks tired, resigned more like. Shouto has a distinct feeling that the moment he jumps, if he manages to get the boy off his back, the boy will soon follow.
It's hard to talk someone down from the edge when they have nothing left to hope for.
"I'm… I'm sorry. You're probably tired of listening to me apologize, I do that to people a lot, but yeah. Sorry."
The boy doesn't make a move to stand, he just sits with his knees tucked under his chin and his arms hugging his legs.
"Why do you want to jump?"
Shouto startles, looking over to the boy. He's gazing at the edge again, an emotion that Shouto can't place in his eyes.
"I'm sorry?"
"You- you don't need to answer if you don't want to. That was insensitive of me to ask-"
"Homelife." The boy squeaks, his mouth shutting with an audible 'clack'. Red creeps up his face and he chews his bottom lip again.
"…oh. I'm sorry."
Shouto shrugs, humming non-committally.
"What's your reason," Shouto asks, searching the boy's face. A familiar fear flashes in his eyes, but it's gone in an instant. He curls tighter around himself, tears budding in his eyes again.
"I'm quirkless."
Just those two words explain it all. Quirkless people in this generation have a suicide rate of 60% for a reason, the majority not living to see adulthood. Near all are victims of bullying and hate crimes, the laws around quirk discrimination not appearing to apply.
While Shouto does not like his quirk, he wouldn't want to be one of the few quirkless people.
Shouto has thought about it, sure. Things like, 'Maybe if I was quirkless, Father would leave me alone. I wouldn't hurt.'
But then, thoughts of another child being born and put through the same thing makes him sick to his stomach. There is also his father's clear disdain of quirkless people. So he casts the thought away.
All that Shouto can respond with is a pathetic, 'oh.' A little bit of him feels disgusted, beaten into him by his father's lectures on how useless and worthless quirkless people are. On how they are the scum of the earth that should be purged as soon as they are discovered to not have a quirk so that the bloodline may remain clean.
The rest of Shouto feels disgusted with himself, for thinking that about someone that feels hopeless enough to kill themself. To think that about the one person that he can feel himself relating to because even if at a glance they seem to have lived polar opposite lives, they have still ended up at the same place.
How should Shouto proceed? He wants to jump, to end it all and get it over with, but he knows that the boy will follow soon after. Father is bound to arrive soon; the sun is dipping towards the horizon and they were probably due to leave a good ten minutes ago.
'What will happen if Father finds out what I'm doing?'
Shouto hears a whimper and turns towards the boy. The boy's shoulders are shaking violently and his quick breaths are filled with hiccups.
'What will happen to him if Father finds out what I'm doing?'
Shouto is stuck with two options. Comfort the boy and attempt to brave his crippling social awkwardness or ignore him and pretend he isn't hearing nor seeing the boy. Both are hard to do but pull at his gut in different ways. Shouto feels sick to his stomach, just sitting there and watching the boy sob.
He opens his mouth and intends on closing it again, but the words begin tumbling out against his will.
"Hey, uh, I'm bad at this, but uh," 'What the hell am I doing?' "Please, please don't cry. I didn't mean to say something rude."
Shouto raises a hand and rubs circles on the boy's back, trying his hardest not to look at him. He failed.
The pit in Shouto's stomach grows larger with every choked sob the boy lets out. This boy really is hopeless.
Shouto feels useless. He already has enough issues, it's obvious considering how he was and still plans on jumping. But this boy looks like he's has his heart shattered too many times and had to pick it up and glue it back together on his own, and now he's too tired to keep trying for something that he knows will happen again.
"I'm, I'm tired," the boy sobs, hiccups lining every word. "Please just let me go. Please."
For the first time since he was six, Shouto lets his eyes fill with tears in front of another person.
"Only if you let me." Shouto's breath catches on the last word. The boy lifts his head, green eyes still puffy, and looking like a train wreck. Is this what Shouto looks like?
The boy begins to shake his head, but freezes. He wilts, the unidentified emotion that Shouto saw leaving his eyes. He hadn't realized that whatever that emotion is made up every ounce of the boy until it left, leaving him looking like a crumpled flower.
"Is there… is there really nothing I can do?" Shouto feels something wet roll down his cheek as his throat tightens. He shakes his head.
He knows he's crying. He doesn't want to admit it.
"Well, before we… you know… can I have your name," the boy asks.
"Only if you tell me yours." The boy shifts and stands, offering a hand down to Shouto.
"I'm Izuku." Shouto takes the boy's hand and stands.
"Shouto."
They walk to the edge of the roof and climb onto the wall.
Shouto feels light, kind of like he's on top of the world. He can see everything from here, from the sun setting into the sea and all the people below. They look kind of like ants.
"It was… nice to know you, I guess."
How do people talk every day? Shouto can't even talk properly in his last few minutes.
"Yeah, same here." Izuku smiles, his body lax. Accepting. Happy?
"I… don't know if you believe in any of this stuff, but see you on the other side?" Izuku looks down not to the street below, but to something Shouto can't see.
"Yeah. See you."
-o0o-
What did y'all think? Tell me in the comments! Also, this is more of a side project, so I don't know how often I will be updating.