Izuku
He was dying. He was most certainly dying. It was all so sudden, too soon. He never thought this day would come so young. He was only twenty years old, and all of the bones in his body were going to be reduced to powder. The air was being squeezed out of his lungs. He was dying. All because Midoriya Inko insisted on surrounding him in a deathgrip of a hug. The small woman's arms were circled around him as tightly as she could.
On top of the bruising force of her hug, she was sobbing. Again. It was probably the fourth or fifth time that day she'd broken down into tears. What was worse, each time she started, he followed suit. He could already feel a fresh wave of tears prickling at the corners of his very red, very sore eyes.
"Mom," Izuku wheezed as he patted her back reassuringly.
He really needed her to stop crying. He would never be able to leave if she didn't. He'd cave and stay home for the rest of his life to take care of her if she kept this up. It sounded great, but he knew she'd never forgive herself in the long run for holding him back.
"It's going to be okay. You don't need to worry."
"I-I k-know," she wailed. Once again, her face was buried into his chest. "I'm just n-not ready for my baby to move on. T-To go to college! You're growing up so fast!"
Izuku couldn't help but roll his eyes. It wasn't as if this was his first year of college. He'd spent two years in community college getting all of his general education credits out of the way. It was cheaper that way. He'd gotten the same education at the community college level as he would at a four year University. So, he'd gotten those first two years out of the way. She'd been okay with that. She just wasn't okay with where he'd decided to go for his junior and senior year.
"I'll be okay. I promise," he assured her.
But even he was worried. He'd never been that far away from her ever. Musutafu was a two hour drive from his and his mother's apartment back home. By train, it would easily take him four if they didn't encounter any unforeseen issues. He'd checked the train schedules just last week and done the calculations. He couldn't just go back home if he wanted to. And that in itself was terrifying. He could do this. He could make it work. He'd been preparing for this for ages. He didn't need to rely on his Mom anymore. But maybe she needed him? Maybe he should just drop out now. Find a University closer to her. Yes. He should do that.
But when he fixed his green eyes on his mother and opened his mouth to speak, she already had him fixed with a knowing smile.
He had been muttering again, hadn't he?
She chuckled.
He was still muttering, wasn't he? His mom chuckled, confirming his suspicions. He really needed to work on the muttering... Half the time, he didn't even realize he was doing it.
Midoriya Inko pushed herself away from Izuku and fixed him with a watery smile. "I'm not worried about me, baby," she said gently. She lifted her hand to reach his cheek. "I'm worried about the other students. What if you get a roommate that you don't like? What if the other kids are mean to you?"
Izuku scratched the back of his head sheepishly, her hands resting on his shoulders. His mom was filling her head with the same worries she'd had back when he was in middle school.
"I think it'll be fine. It's not like I'm in middle school anymore," he said with a little bit of a laugh. His eyes shifted over to his dorm building. "Besides, Yueii is really good about putting people with similar majors together. They told us that during orientation last week. Don't you remember?"
When she didn't seem satisfied, he tacked on, "Plus, Ocha, Shouto, and Tenya are all at Yueii, too, Mom. I've got the best support network I could ask for."
Inko sniffled a little bit, nodding resolutely. "I'm proud of you, Izu," she said. "You finally made it. You finally got to Yueii. And on scholarship, no less."
He beamed down at her before letting his eyes wander around the campus. They were in the dorm parking lot specifically, but all around them were the buildings that made up Yueii University. Izuku had dreamed of going there since he was a little kid. The University had such a small acceptance rate for high school students at .2%. The acceptance rate for transfer students was even smaller. He'd had to take all sorts of crazy tests on top of his perfect GPA in order to land a spot in the school's fine arts program. He'd worked his butt off to get in. He'd studied as hard as he could. He took all of his classes seriously. He'd earned a full ride to the University with his grades and the scholarships the school provided. But that was all the easy part.
The road wasn't paved well for him. He'd faced so many trials along the way. The biggest bump in the road to Izuku's dreams was a bump that he'd never get rid of. He'd been born lacking one of the five major senses that the human body was known for. He was born without the ability to hear.
Izuku was deaf.
Being deaf had made everything harder throughout school. He and his mom weren't the most well off during his childhood. Izuku hadn't actually gotten his first pair of hearing aids until he was ten years old. They were a commodity they just couldn't afford on his mother's nursing job at the local hospital. He'd told her on more than one occasion that he didn't care about it, either. She'd taught herself Japanese Sign Language in order to communicate with him. He'd never once heard his mother's or his own voice until a decade into his life. Before then, he'd been in all deaf classes. He'd relied on school JSL-trained teachers to give him his education.
When he'd gotten his first pair of hearing aids, that had all changed. He'd finally been integrated into general education class (with a signer there, of course). But his voice wasn't as strong as the other students. His pronunciation was flawed. His articulation was muddled. His words often came out garbled and hard to understand. The bullying had sparked in middle school. At first, he didn't understand why they were so mean to him. Why they made fun of him when he was trying his best. But he eventually learned the art of ignoring them. He eventually learned that these people may want to drag him down and make him hurt, but he would rise above it and smile like All Might, his childhood idol, to get through the day. He'd smile and show them that he was worthy of his dreams.
When high school came around, he'd met his best friends Uraraka Ochako, Todoroki Shouto, and Iida Tenya. They'd defended him, helped him rise above his tormentors, helped him realize his self worth. They helped him when he struggled to speak, helped him practice his articulation. They made him feel normal in every sense of the word. His owed so much to those three.
Being deaf had always been a challenge for Izuku.
But in the second decade of his life, he saw it as a part of himself. Being deaf didn't limit him. It had come to define who he was. It made him into the person that he was today. He took everything in stride with a smile on his face. Sure, as a child and even in his adult life he may have been the biggest cry baby, but he knew he was strong, too. He didn't put up with the derogatory comments of others, especially when it came to his limitations.
And his mom, Inko, had been his biggest supporter.
"I'm finally here, Mom," he said gently.
God, the tears were coming again. He could feel them coming down his cheeks as another wave of emotion swallowed him whole. They hugged again for way longer than necessary. And when they'd both finally managed to get a hold on their emotions and their tears, they started moving his boxings up to his dorm.
Izuku's dorm was on the third floor of his building. It only took a few trips to get his belongings into the dorm, which his roommate's belongings already occupied, although the man himself was nowhere to be seen. He'd probably already been at the dorm for a few days, considering Izuku was a part of the second wave of students to move in - Yueii had split it up to avoid a rush of students trying to move in all at once. His roommate's side of the room was simple and plain. His bedspread was a burnt orange color, but that's about as much personality as it got. There weren't any posters. He didn't have any pictures of family or friends on his desk. His laptop was on the desk, but unlike Izuku's, which was covered in sticked and vinyl decals, it was pristine. He had no idea what to expect of his roommate based on his half of the dorm.
As one last teary round of hugs, good lucks, and goodbyes, Izuku was left alone to deal with the feat of unpacking. His first order of business was taking out his hearing aids. As much as he loved being able to hear everything that happened around him, there was nothing quite like a bit of silence.
By the time evening hit, he was nearly done unpacking. The worst of it had come to pass. His clothes were all hung up in his closet. His desk was set up with his laptop, notebooks, sketchbooks, and various art supplies. He'd made his bed, set up his bookshelf with more miscellaneous art reference books, textbook, and filled sketchbooks. He'd even scrawled his name on the whiteboard on their door so that people would know he lived there. All that was left was a bit of decoration. Namely All Might memorabilia.
Izuku stared at the wall where he'd hung his favorite poster of All Might above his bed. It was a framed, limited edition that was signed by Yagi Toshinori himself. He was trying to decide whether or not he should put fairy lights around it or around the frame of his bed when he'd felt something large and soft hit him in the back.
A squeak slipped past Izuku's lips, but without his hearing aids, he wasn't sure if it sounded human or not. His heart shot to his throat. He quickly spun to face the direction where the object had come from, only to see another person there.
The first descriptor that came to mind was handsome. Whoever this was - his roommate, mostly likely - was handsome. Izuku had seen many handsome men in his life, but this guy easily was the icing on the cake of his short, gay life. He couldn't help but stare. He was tall, taller than Izuku at least with a muscular build. Specifically muscles in his arms and upper body. The tight, black muscle tank he wore left little to the imagination. He had spiky hair that was styled in an undercut. It was a light blond that seemed almost impossibly light, but too real to be dyed. His eyes had to be the most striking thing of all. They were a deep, crimson color that almost felt like it was burning into him.
That was probably because this guy was absolutely pissed. Now that Izuku was focusing on his facial features, he could see the anger that was radiating off of him. His facial features were contorted into a deep scowl. His brows were furrowed, and his mouth - with that lovely cupid's bow of his - was very clearly shouting things that Izuku couldn't hear.
Right. He couldn't hear.
The greenette quickly snatched his hearing aids off of the charger on his desk before jamming them into his ears. He turned them up as high as they could go, which he immediately determined to be a mistake. His roommate was yelling. And his yells were absolutely piercing. Izuku had to rip his hearing aids from his ears and turn them down halfway before he could return them to their homes.
By now, his roommate had stopped his belligerent yelling in favor of fixing Izuku with a terrifying scowl. He couldn't believe he'd already gotten off on the wrong foot, and he'd only knowingly been in the guy's presence for a few minutes at best. It didn't help that he spent the first thirty seconds ogling him. His roommate probably thought he was the biggest creep!
Izuku scratched the back of his head. He didn't know what to say, but he figured an apology was probably his best bet.
"Ah. Sorry about that," he said, picking up the pillow that he must have thrown at Izuku to get his attention and sheepishly holding it out to the angry blond. "I didn't realize you'd come in. I'm-"
"Rude as fucking shit, asshole," his roommate snapped. His voice was a low baritone that still had very clear traces of anger and irritation in it. "Your fucking roommate comes in, and all you do if completely ignore them for the first fucking five minutes. How fucking nice."
Izuku's viridian eyes widened in shock. He knew his roommate was angry that he'd ignored him, but did he really need to use such violent language? It wasn't as if Izuku had intentionally tried to ignore him.
"I-I'm sorry!" Izuku stammered, waving his hands in front of him in a placating manner. He could already tell that with his quickened pace of speaking that his words were going to become garbled. He always had such a hard time annunciating when he was nervous. "I promise, this is all just a bit of a misunderstanding."
"Fuckin' better be," the blond snapped, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I-I - ah - I was unpacking and I had to let them charge and I didn't hear you come in! This place must be so sturdy if I didn't feel the vibrations in the floor, too, now that you think about it. Honestly, I was probably just so absorbed in putting up my All Might poster to even notice anything. And I'm sorry. I must seem so rude right now! Oh, gosh, I'm rambling. I always ramble when I get nervous. It's so em-"
"Jesus fuck! Cut the fuckin' word vomit," his roommate snapped. His irritation only seemed to grow worse. Oh, crap, Izuku was making things worse. "I can't even understand half of whatever the fuck you're sayin'. Try that the fuck again, and slow the fuck down."
Izuku sucked in a deep breath and counted to ten in his head before he spoke again. "I'm sorry for being rude. My name is Midoriya Izuku," he said, bowing to his roommate. "I didn't intend to ignore you. It's just that - ah - I-I'm deaf, and I had taken my hearing aids out to - ah - charge. I promise, I didn't mean to be rude!"
His roommate only stared at him with that same scowling, pissed-off expression. God, he was off to such a great start. He was making such an amazing first impression. Way to go, Izuku.
The blond snorted and turned away from him, busying himself with putting some bottled drinks in their shared minifridge. He continued to grumble what Izuku assumed were explicatives under his breath, but with him turned away, he couldn't be sure. It was always so much harder to hear when people faced away from him. Not only could he not see the speaker's lips, but when someone was turned away from him while they spoke, it made it infinitely harder for the soundwaves to actually reach him. The perks of being deaf.
The blond was hitting all of his weak points right now.
Speaking of the blond...
"Uh, actually," he said, scratching the back of his head. "What's your name? You didn't introduce yourself."
The blond grumbled something from his side of the room, but Izuku didn't hear it because his roommate had refused to face him. He thought it was honestly a little rude. And he had called Izuku rude. He couldn't help but feel a little miffed.
"I'm sorry," Izuku said. "I didn't catch that. I can't exactly hear very well if you're - uh - not facing me."
He heard the blond snort and repeat his name. Again, he wasn't facing Izuku, so he barely caught it. Ka-something. On a whim, Izuku decided that if this guy was going to be rude, then he'd decide a nickname for him himself.
"Well, it's nice to meet you, Kacchan," Izuku said, attempting to hide the smug tone in his voice at his creative choice.
The blond - Kacchan - whirled around from where he stood stocking the fridge to face Izuku. He had a plastic bottle of tea in his hand, which he pointed at Izuku and brandished like a weapon.
"Hah?!" he shouted. "What the fuck did you call me, shitty nerd?"
Izuku gave a little snort of a giggle at his roommate's reaction. So hot headed. "I called you 'Kacchan'," he said with a shrug. "I couldn't listen to your name because you wouldn't turn to face me while you talked. So, I came up with something of my own."
Kacchan snarled again, his face getting even more pissed off. "Fuck that shit, shitty nerd! Don't fuckin' call me that stupid nickname."
Izuku sent him a beaming smile. "Well, I could always give you something different," he said. He tapped his chin for a moment before a mischievous glint came to his verdant eyes. "I could call you Grumpy Blond Gremlin."
If looks could murder, Kacchan's would have certainly obliterated him on the spot. The vein on his temple twitched. His face grew red with Izuku assumed to be anger and embarrassment. He didn't know which emotion was stronger. He figured it was probably the anger based on how tightly he clenched his jaw and bared his teeth. Usually, Izuku wasn't so forward, either. Usually murderous looks turned him into a stammering, terrified mess. But there was something about Kacchan that made it so easy.
"My name is fuckin' Bakugou Katsuki," the blond gremlin snapped. "Call me fuckin' Bakugou and nothin' else, nerd."
"I think I like Kacchan better," Izuku said. His grin only grew wider.
"I said fuckin' no," Kacchan snapped. "That's not a fuckin' option."
"You curse a lot, Kacchan," the greenette said
Kacchan threw his hands up in the air in defeat. "What the fuck ever, shitty nerd. Do whatever the fuck you want. Not like I give a fuck."
Izuku abandoned his project of putting up his fairy lights, deciding he could always do it another time. Instead, he opened the door to their door and scrawled 'Kacchan' on the white board beside his own name in Kanji. When the aforementioned blond noticed what he was doing, he peered over his shoulder.
The expected outburst followed just as Izuku thought it would.
"What the fuck, fuckin' freckles?" he roared. "Don't go puttin' that there for people to see! It's not my fuckin' name!"
"I think it's a nice nickname!" Izuku protested.
But Kacchan had snatched the marker from Izuku's hand. He erased where Izuku had scrawled 'Kacchan' and replaced it with 'Bakugou' in neat Kanji. He then peered at Izuku's own name.
"Tch! You can't even make your own name look right with your shitty fuckin' handwriting," he snapped. Before Izuku knew what he was doing, Kacchan was erasing 'Midoriya' and a small portion of his first name. Now, the board read 'Bakugou' and 'Deku'.
"Deku?" Izuku wondered aloud.
"Yeah. You're a fuckin' deku, nerd," he growled. "For your useless fuckin' handwriting and your shit nickname you gave me. You're a fuckin' Deku."
Izuku blinked a few times. He wasn't sure how well he'd take to being called Deku. It did mean useless, but he could see how Kacchan got it... His name was actually quite similar with the Kanji characters. So maybe... But being called useless? That would suck. Maybe he would just have to make the nickname work. If it got the blond gremlin to actually speak to him without calling him a shitty nerd, it had to be better, right? Where did he even get the idea to call him a shitty nerd? He didn't do anything particularly nerdy, did he? He didn't say anything to make him seem that way? He did have a lot of All Might memorabilia in the box on his bed, though. Including his signed, limited edition poster. And his bedspread was in the pattern of All Might's Silver Age costume... Yes-
"What the fuck is that muttering for? Jesus fuck. Do you ever stop fuckin' talking?" Kacchan asked as he collapsed onto his bed. He stared up at the ceiling, very clearly avoiding looking at the shorter boy.
Izuku blinked once, twice, three times before realization dawned on him. Oh. Muttering. Right. He'd been doing it again.
"Ah - sorry, Kacchan," he said sheepishly. "I don't actually realize when I do it."
"What the fuck do you mean? You can't hear yourself muttering a mile a minute?" he asked. Izuku could have sworn he heard a shitty Deku follow after that, but he couldn't be sure.
"Yeah. No. Actually, I can't," he said matter-of-factly. "You know, the whole deaf thing really makes it hard to - you know - hear. Especially the sound of my own voice."
"Well you're fuckin' lucky, aren't you?" Kacchan asked.
Izuku's brows furrowed. "How does any of that make me lucky?"
"You don't have to heard the sound of your own annoying fuckin' voice," he snapped, his head turning so that red met green.
"Kacchan! That's mean!" Izuku all but whined.
"I don't give a damn," he snapped. "I need to go to fuckin' bed. So you can either shut the fuck up or leave. Take your fuckin' pick."
Izuku looked down at his watch. It was only 8:30. He didn't understand why Kacchan was going to bed so early. But then again, Izuku was tired. The drive to Musutafu had been long. He'd been unpacking all day. Sleeping early couldn't hurt too much. He went about some semblance of an evening routine. Brushing his teeth, washing his face, changing into pajamas. After turning out the lights, he even very clearly announced to Kacchan that he was taking out his hearing aids so the man wouldn't attempt to talk to him after he'd effectively rendered himself deaf to all sounds and earned himself a repeat of earlier that evening.
"Like I give a damn, shitty Deku," the blond had grumbled. "Shut the fuck up."
After his hearing aids were set to charge and Izuku was laying in bed with his green curls splayed against his pillow, he said a gentle 'goodnight' to Kacchan in the darkness. He knew he'd articulated the words. The motions of his mouth and tongue were correct. He'd even felt his vocal cords rumble to produce the sound. But he couldn't hear if Kacchan replied. With his rough exterior, it was probably safe to assume that he hadn't, but part of Izuku wanted to imagine that he had.
