icarus

Kaminari forgets things a lot. He plays it off, acts like it isn’t a big deal, blames other issues when he doesn’t do stuff, but he quite honestly just - forgets. And he hates it.

He didn’t notice for a while that everyone else seems to have more memories of their childhood than he does, but he blows it off, because in all honesty it doesn’t matter much, right? Right. (it does matter)

There’s so much that he just…can’t remember anything of. He doesn’t even know what it is that he’s forgetting, and it absolutely kills him, because he never really realized just how much was missing and it scares him, just a bit. He knows there’s not anything to worry about, but it still scares him anyways. and even worse, he wants to know, he really, really wants to know. He needs to know what it is that he’s missing. And it eats at him that he doesn’t. That he can’t.

One effect of this is that Kaminari absolutely LOVES stories about himself, especially himself as a child. Even if it’s the same story he’s heard tons of times before, he listens intently every time. Those bits of information about who he was, who he is, they mean the world to him. It’s one of the scariest things about when he thinks about losing contact with his parents - never hearing those stories ever again. Forgetting them like he seems to forget everything else. Losing those precious parts of who he is.

But it’s not just childhood memories that are missing, either. It’s basic things, from recent events to vocabulary. Words he knows well escape him all the time, he can understand most anything you put in front of him to read but if you ask him to use anything but basic words in a description? He honestly can’t do it. He just can’t, he suddenly just doesn’t know the words anymore. And it makes him feel absolutely horrible. It destroys his self confidence, makes him feel like a fake, just…hurts him, so much.

He also has spectacular trouble when it comes to doing homework. it’s not just actually doing the work, it’s also about remembering to do it. His brain seems to completely skip over classes or assignments when he’s thinking over what work he has to do, and writing down assignments doesn’t work too well either - he claims to hate the agenda books and such, but really he just forgets them too. Even if he writes down his homework in an agenda book, it’s highly unlikely that he’ll even check it that night.

One of the worst things about it is how so many people just don’t understand. He’s gotten anxiety attacks before because people wouldn’t realize how he just can’t remember. No, he can’t tell you right where he put something, no he doesn’t know if he’s seen your phone or where it would be, and no, he really does not know where he had his wallet last!!

He just wishes people would at least try to understand. To at least not act like he’s just being difficult and doing it on purpose. Because he doesn’t do that, not ever. Not when it comes to memory issues. He just…would never do that.

He just wants to remember, god damn it, but he can’t. No matter how hard he tries, he just…can’t.

- Todoroki has trouble with verbal interaction, he doesn’t talk much and gets overwhelmed easily by (auditory) sensory overload - He’s not very good at understanding social cues and expecting how people will react to social situations, people like Midoriya or Tooru are really extreme in their emotions in his eyes, but it actually kinda helps him because it’s easier to expect how they might react to different situations. - Ironically enough, he has sensory issues with heat, both too hot and too cold - He uses his quirk to maintain a constant temperature, so his quirk both helps and hurts with the sensory issues - He’s very touch sensitive, he has trouble with certain fabrics and his burn is extra sensitive - It really hurts him if anyone touches his burn scar at all, and it hurts if his hair brushes up against it unexpectedly but he forces himself not to flinch - On that subject, Endeavor, expectedly, is shitty af about his autism - Endeavor would call Todoroki’s stim toys “childish” and take them away, discourage his stimming, etcetera etcetera - Flapping was one of Todoroki’s favorite stims when he was younger, but then he was forced to stop - He used to use his flames as a visual stim but…well. That was before he didn’t want anything to do with them. - His ice is actually a stim for him as well, he likes the smoothness but then it feels too cold easily and when it starts to melt it’s an issue because the wetness on his skin is a Very Bad Feeling for him

- 1A first learns about his autism because of Midoriya and Kirishima - Midoriya is very observant, but Kirishima actually has a younger sister with autism, so he has experience with it and realizes pretty early on that Todoroki might have autism (he isn’t certain though, of course) - Kirishima ends up talking to Todoroki about it, and finds out that Todoroki has been (secretly) diagnosed (because Endeavor doesn’t want people knowing his son is autistic) - On Todoroki’s birthday, he walks into the common room of the dorms and everyone is sitting there with a big wrapped up box - When he opens it, it’s chock full of stim toys, from an (iceberg) slime making set from Mina and Momo, to glitter bottles made by Aoyama, to a chew stim toy given by a strangely quiet Bakugou who won’t meet his eyes - Todoroki is amazed and touched as Kaminari explains how they all got together and pooled their money to get lots of toys for different kinds of stims, since they don’t know what he would want - He spends the next week figuring out just what he likes best, and slowly he tells his class more about his autism and how it affects him personally

- Eraserhead is little shinsou’s idol - shinsou knows all about him! well, all that there is to know (which isn’t much, considering the low profile he keeps) - but one day, something happens, something that’s a near mirror of a future encounter between a popular hero and a quirkless boy - it happens when elementary schooler shinsou sees a man and realizes - that’s HIM - that’s shinsou’s hero!! that’s ERASERHEAD!!! - and young shinsou, he runs up to his idol - with the little eraserhead toy his mom made for him (since there’s none in stores) clutched tight in his little hands - those hands are shaking as shinsou asks - “can i be a hero? a hero like you?” - aizawa looks at the young boy in front of him, crouches down, and asks - “like me?” - and shinsou tells him, tells his idol how his quirk isn’t physical like most heroes’ are, and how his quirk won’t work, won’t be effective if everyone knows what it is, so he’s worried that even if he manages to become a hero, soon enough into his career it’ll just be useless - and aizawa cocks his head, thinks a bit, and then tells shinsou a few things about how he does his hero work and what it means for a hero to have a non-physical quirk - he’s not going to give a tiny child battle advice, but he makes sure to encourage and reassure him a bit - and then, then - aizawa, aizawa asks shinsou what his quirk is - and shinsou gets nervous and fidgety - aizawa tells him that it’s okay, that he doesn’t have to tell him his quirk - and shinsou is ready to cry because this is all so overwhelming - (his mom watches nervously because she just wants her little boy to be okay and happy and doesn’t meeting your heroes never end well?) - and shinsou whispers it out, whispers how he can control people, can make them do anything, but only after they respond to him - and aizawa, he puts it together from all the hints, he realizes that this little boy probably has people being mean to him because of his quirk - (is this because aizawa was bullied? because maybe aizawa once was a child just like shinsou, would get beat up even when he took his bullies’ quirks away? it’s possible) - and aizawa just looks shinsou in the eye - and tells shinsou - - “that sounds like a FANTASTIC quirk. perfect for fighting villains” - (shinsou tears up real fast, he’s positively BEAMING at this point) - aizawa leaves shinsou with a parting comment as he pushes himself up into a standing position - “I can’t wait to work with you one day” - “…work with me?” - “work with you, yes. as heroes. good luck, i know you’ll be a great one.”

- kaminari denki first found the term “dermatillomania” online when he was 14 years old - he had a friend who had developed a mysterious skin issue, so he was helping them try to figure out what it could be when he stumbled upon the term dermatillomania - he looked at the definition and looked down at his arms and just. knew. - he was self conscious about having derma for a long while, but he has come to terms with it and only really feels bad about it all when someone mentions his scars - and then he meets tooru.

- tooru pulls out her hair. - she does it all the time, when stressed, when waiting, at random times throughout the day. she’s even done it in her sleep before. - nobody sees her pulling her hair, sees the bald spots, notices that there’s anything wrong at all - it actually makes her feel worse than if people saw, because she doesn’t know how to handle talking about it - she thinks about it, thinks about how if people could see her they’d be constantly judging her, asking about her hair, staring at her - it scares her to consider what it would be like, if she was visible, if people knew - and then she meets kaminari.

- when kaminari and tooru meet, neither of them realize that the other has derma/trich, in part because kaminari can’t see tooru and tooru doesn’t even know what trich is, let alone derma - but tooru notices kaminari’s scabs and scars, and she knows it means something, she just doesn’t know what - and kaminari sees, sometimes, tooru’s clothed arm reaching up to her hair an awful lot, and he knows it reminds him of something, of someone, but as much as he tries he can’t make the connection - but then one day, he’s sitting in the common room with midoriya, tooru, kirishima, and a few others and midoriya asks - “hey tooru! why don’t you make a suit out of your hair, like mirio does, instead of going without clothes in hero work? wouldn’t it be safer to have clothes?” - tooru stops moving. - after a few moments of nothing, she launches into anxious babbling, saying stuff like how it would need to be made entirely of her hair, and her hair doesn’t grow that fast, and a lot of other reasons that make sense, but altogether seem…off, to kaminari - so when he cuts herself off abruptly and says “sorry i- i gotta go now”, he follows her out of the room after a few moments, motioning to midoriya that it’s okay, that he’ll talk to tooru - when he stops her down the hallway and notices her sleeves show that her hands are in her hair again - kaminari looks at tooru - or rather, where he can see her clothes floating - and asks “have you ever heard of trich - of trichotillomania i mean?” - tooru says no, and that’s how everything starts.