.𖥔 ݁ ˖

“this is fine,” he says, which is how he knows it’s not. “yea— i-i can manage!!” he stays there for a second too long before he pushes off and ends up landing harder than he means to. he stumbles, catches himself. left breathless. alive in a way that feels unfamiliar and a little too big for his chest.

something in him shifts. the first time he makes it to a rooftop, it isn’t graceful and it isn’t planned. it’s a series of decisions made too quickly, instincts outrunning logic, body before his brain.

he climbs and slips a few times. he also catches, and tries again. “one more— just— just one more—” he pulls himself up over the edge and collapses onto the surface, chest heaving, limbs buzzing with something electric and unsteady. for a second, he just lies there.

then he laughs quiet at first. then it’s a little louder. and not because it’s funny, it’s because he doesn’t really know what else to do with it.

it feels.. so much more different up here.

izuku midoriya learns the rhythm of the city before he ever understands himself, and maybe that’s the only way it could have happened. the belief that new york was something too vast, too layered, too alive for him to ever make sense of it used to sit heavy in his heart, like trying to memorize a language with no alphabet. now he knows better. now he knows the streets talk, and they never really stop. you just have to learn how to listen.

and it isn’t something anyone teaches you. not a single handbook, no careful instruction. it’s something that finds you in fragments. in echoes that don’t line up until they end up spontaneously doing so. in the way mornings arrive before you’re ready and nights stretch long past the point of comfort. in the way the air shifts depending on how far you are from the ground, like altitude rewrites the rules of breathing itself.

down below, everything presses in. conversations that stack on top of each other, when footsteps blur into something constant, lives brushing past without ever really colliding. it’s dense. it’s almost suffocating.

but up here? its thinner. the wind doesn’t ask permission when it wants to move, so neither does he. there’s a kind of honesty to it, something that’s stripped down to its barest form, where there’s no room to pretend you’re anything other than exactly what you are.

the first time he clears three buildings without second guessing himself, it startles something loose inside him. a laugh slips out before he can stop it, bright and disbelieving, because it feels like getting away with something he was never meant to try.

his feet barely touch the ledge before he’s pushing off again. his hands are already moving, already aiming, already putting trust into something. something he’s not fully deciphered yet.

he can’t help when his hands fumble for half a second, but they find their rhythm again. another web, this one steadier. it’s anchored higher, pulling him back into a cleaner arc.

there’s a beat where he just… exists in it. suspended. when his heart races, and his thoughts catch up in fragments.

but it’s almost as if someone could look up at the wrong moment, suspended between one impossible point and the next, they’ll see through everything and say it out loud.

oh. you’re just a kid.

and he is. he is, in the way his grip falters for half a second too long before he corrects it, in the way his landing angles crooked before he adjusts, in the way his thoughts run faster than his body can keep up with.

“okay, okay, adjust for wind resistance, that was… that was off by like, at least two degrees, maybe three, note to self—“ he can’t quite decide if that was terrifying or the best thing he’s ever done.

it’s both. it’s always both.

the morning doesn’t arrive all that fast. it never really does. it seeps in a slow and deliberate fashion, threading itself through the narrow spaces between buildings where the light finds purchase first. it catches on glass, fractures across fire escapes, lingers on rooftops that have held too many quiet hours to count.

he city loosens, inch by inch, releasing whatever it held too tightly through the night. izuku feels it before he can see it. the shift in the wind, the way silence gives up its shape and becomes something waiting to be filled. he perches there, balanced in that fragile space between seconds, thinking something small and dangerous and soft enough to almost scare him.

he made it to morning again.

“good morning, new yorkers,” a voice crackles on a radio somewhere below, tinny and warm all at once, folding itself into the early light. “looks like we’ve got clear skies today, so if you’ve got somewhere to be, now’s your chance—”

he lands on a fire escape a little too fast, momentum carrying him forward before he catches himself with a hand against the railing. it rattles under his grip, metal complaining softly, and he freezes like the city might scold him for it.

“—and if you don’t, well… maybe take the long way anyway.”

“…okay,” he mutters, glancing down like the voice might be speaking directly to him. he straightens, brushing nonexistent dust from his suit, trying to recover some kind of dignity that was never really there to begin with. “cool.. y-yeah. that was, um… intentional— ..obviously.”

his mask does nothing to hide the flush creeping up his neck. he clears his throat, looks out instead.

new york stretches in front of him like something waking up slowly, reluctantly, beautifully. windows flicker to life one by one, traffic emerges into existence in uneven waves, voices rise from sidewalks and drift upward in pieces that don’t quite connect. someone laughs from an open window. someone argues three floors down. somewhere, a dog barks like it’s announcing the sun itself.

it’s overwhelming in a way that never quite fades. it’s everything at once. and somehow, impossibly, it’s his. not in a way he can claim out loud. not in a way that feels earned. but in the quiet spaces between movement and stillness, in the moments where no one is looking, it settles into him like something that recognizes him back.

outside, he’s a blur. something people point at with half certainty, phones raised like proof matters more than experience.

“did you see that—?”

“no, that’s gotta be fake—”

“i swear he was right there—”

he hears it sometimes, words carried up to him, tangled in the rush of wind and adrenaline. it makes him grin, sharp and fleeting, even as his stomach flips at the thought of being seen too clearly.

because then there’s you.

and your world is smaller, softer around the edges, contained in the steady hum of fluorescent lights and the quiet persistence of routine. the coffee machine sputters like it’s thinking about quitting before you do. the shelves never sit quite right no matter how many times you fix them. the clock moves in slow, stubborn increments, like it resents being watched.

you exist in a space that doesn’t ask too much of you, and maybe that’s why he keeps coming back. the bell above the door rings, sharp against the stillness, a sigh filling the silence before you’re speaking. you look up mid sentence.

“if you’re here for the lottery tickets, the machine’s—” you stop when you see him. hoodie pulled low, like it might hide the way he carries himself. his curls peek out anyway, unruly, unbothered by whatever effort he put into taming them. there’s a tension in his posture.

like he’s used to arriving just a second too late.

“—broken,” you finish, quieter now. he blinks at you, caught off guard in a way that feels almost practiced. “oh. uh. that’s okay, i wasn’t— i mean, i didn’t come for that,” he says quickly, words tripping over each other like they’re trying to escape. “not that i come here for specific things, i mean i do, just not— not like—”

you tilt your head, not unkind, just curious, and it’s enough to make him deflate slightly under the weight of being perceived. “…hi,” he tries again, softer this time. and it does land.

“hi, izuku.” it does something to him, every single time. something quiet and grounding, like you reached into the noise that follows him everywhere and pulled out a piece of stillness just for him to stand in.

he lingers longer than he means to.

“you ever think about quitting?” you ask one night, voice light but not careless, eyes fixed on something other than him. he frowns slightly. “quitting what?”

you shrug, scanning an item that doesn’t need scanning, the beep filling space that doesn’t actually need filling. “whatever keeps you coming in here looking like you got whooped by a semi truck?”

he chokes on a laugh, shoulders hunching like he can fold himself smaller around it. “i wouldn’t— i mean, i might, but that’s not—”

“izuku.”

you don’t raise your voice, and you don’t really have to. he stills like something in him recognized the moment before he did, breath catching, fingers curling slightly against the counter as whatever he was about to say dissolves into something more honest.

“…no,” he says finally, quieter, the word settling heavier than he expected. “i don’t think about quitting.”

“why not?” he looks at you like he’s measuring something invisible, like he’s trying to calculate how much truth he can hand you without it breaking under its own weight. “b-because if i did..” he says slowly, “i think i’d start seeing all the things i didn’t do— a-all the times i could’ve been there and wasn’t..”

the words linger, the tap from his finger against the counter of your register pressing into the space between you. you nod, like it makes sense in a way that doesn’t need explaining. to say you were left speechless was more of an understatement than it’s full truth might be. not that it was awkward, but you didn’t know what to say to that. like saying the wrong thing might jeopardize anything adjacent to knowing what might be really going on with him. “yeah,” you giggle. “that does sound like you.”

god, that was the silliest thing you could’ve said.

it scares him a little. how easy it is to exist here. not simple, never that, but clear in a way the rest of his life refuses to be.

later, when the city pulls him back into itself, it does so without any kind of warning. a shout from four blocks over, the crack of something breaking, the kind of silence that follows that isn’t really silence at all.

and he moves before he thinks, his body already in motion, web catching, feet leaving the ground like gravity is something negotiable.

“okay, okay, assess situation first, don’t rush in, don’t—”

he rounds the corner mid swing and there it is. a robbery going wrong in the way they always do. he lands harder than he intends to, knees bending to absorb it, heart hammering against his ribs like it’s trying to get ahead of him.

“h-hey!” he calls, voice pitching slightly higher than he wants. he clears his throat, tries again. “hey, um, i think maybe we should all just… take a second? breathe? maybe put the— the weapon down?”

they only stare at him. of course they do.

he shifts his weight, hands lifting in a gesture that’s meant to be reassuring and probably isn’t. “right. um. new plan—” it escalates anyway, but he adapts.

later, much later, when it’s over and the city has swallowed the aftermath like it always does, he finds himself back above it all, perched at the edge of something high enough to feel separate again.

his mask is still on, but he pushes it up just enough to breathe easier, cool air hitting skin that’s still too warm. his fingers flex, aching faintly. his shoulders carry the weight of everything he hasn’t processed yet.

he should keep moving. he knows that. there’s always something else, always somewhere else to be.

but he doesn’t right away. because somewhere below, between flickering lights and uneven shelves and a door that chimes every time it opens, there’s a voice that says his name like it belongs in the daylight. like it isn’t something fragile he has to hide. like it can exist without the weight of everything else pressing down on it.

he pulls his mask back into place, breath evening out behind it. one step back.. then another. he runs. no, leaps.

he falls, and catches himself the way he always does. and as the city rises to meet him, loud and endless and unfinished.

and somehow, impossibly, in the spaces between everything else, it’s starting to feel like it belongs to him when not a lot does. not even the monopoly over his feelings on you. he wanted.. whatever it was about you that kept him so centered in a world it was easy to lose balance, to stay put just long enough he get get a hold of it. a hold of you.

izuku midoriya does not know where you live. he thinks about it more than he should.

not in a way that feels invasive, not in a way he lets himself linger on too long, but in passing moments that catch him off guard. like when he’s perched somewhere high, scanning windows lit gold against the dark, and his mind drifts just enough to wonder which one might be yours.

he never follows the thought to the end. he doesn’t let himself. because knowing would mean crossing something he isn’t sure he’s allowed to touch. so instead, he memorizes what he can.

your schedule, not in a calculated way, but in the way repetition becomes familiarity before you realize it’s happening. the rhythm of your shifts, the small variations in your tone depending on the hour, the way you lean against the counter when it’s quiet like you’ve carved out a pocket of stillness just for yourself.

he learns the details that exist in the open. the rest, he leaves alone. it makes the space between you feel… intentional. like something carefully maintained.

he starts coming in less like an accident and more like a habit.

the bell above the door rings and you glance up, already expecting him without expecting him, if that makes any sense at all. “you’re late,” you say one evening, not looking up from the register.

he stops mid step. “i— what— no i’m not,” he says, immediately defensive in a way that doesn’t hold any real weight. “i don’t have a time, there’s no set—”

you finally look at him, one eyebrow lifting just slightly. he deflates.

“..m-maybe i’m a little late,” he admits, quieter now, stepping up to the counter like he always does, like there’s a mark on the floor only he can see. “but only— b-by, like, five minutes. may-maybe six. which isn’t that bad, …statistically speaking.”

“statistically?” you echo, amused. “yeah, i mean, if you factor in, um… variables,” he gestures vaguely, like that explains anything. “external influences. unforeseen circumstances.”

“like what?” he pauses.

“…traffic,” he says. you stare at him. he winces. you hum softly, not unkind. “you’re getting worse at lying,” you tell him.

“i.. wasn’t lying,” he insists, then hesitates. “…i was just… omitting some details!”

“that’s… that’s lying.”

“…yeah,” he sighs. you slide a bottle of water across the counter toward him without asking if he wants it. he blinks at it, then at you. “you look like you need it,” you say simply. he does. he hadn’t realized it until you said it.

“…thanks,” he murmurs, fingers brushing yours for half a second as he takes it, the contact brief but enough to make something in his chest stutter. he unscrews the cap, takes a sip, then another.

“one of those long nights again, izu?” you ask. he huffs out a quiet laugh, leaning his weight onto the counter, a rush of red up his neck and he’s prays it’s something only god can see.

“s-s.. something like that,” he replies, gaze dropping to the surface between you. “it was… a lot of running. and, um… falling. controlled falling,” he adds quickly, like the distinction matters. “mostly.”

“mostly,” you repeat. “you ever think about taking a night off?” you ask after a moment, tone softer now, less teasing. he doesn’t answer right away. his fingers tap lightly against the bottle, an uneven rhythm that betrays something quieter underneath. “…i don’t think i’d know what to do with it,” he admits finally. you nod like you expected that.

“you could stay,” you say, almost absentmindedly, like the thought just passed through and you decided to let it exist out loud. “for a little while. it’s dead tonight anyway.”

“…yeah?” he asks. “yeah.” it’s simple. it always is with you. he stays.

it becomes a thing after that. he comes in, sometimes a little breathless, sometimes quieter than usual, most times talking too much because he doesn’t know how not to fill the space when he’s nervous.

you let him. you match him where he is. some nights you talk. about nothing, about everything, about things that don’t matter and things that almost do.

he learns the shape of your silence the same way he learned the city’s like it’s not something to fix, just something to sit in.

outside, he is still a blur. a flicker of movement between buildings, a streak against the skyline, a presence people argue about like uncertainty makes it less real.

inside, with you, he is slower. more himself, in a way that feels almost unfamiliar.

one night, he comes in and stops just inside the door, like he forgot what he was there for. and you notice immediately.

“hey,” you say, softer than usual. “you okay?” he nods too quickly. “yeah. yeah, i’m fine. i just—” he trails off, hands curling slightly at his sides like he’s trying to hold onto something that won’t stay still. “it- it was close tonight. closer than.. usual.”

you don’t ask what that means. and you don’t need to. you step out from behind the counter anyway, closing the distance without making it a big thing.

he tenses at first, only for a second. then he lets himself not.

he exhales, shoulders dropping like the weight of that single fact finally settled somewhere he could feel it. you hover there for a second, close enough that he notices, not close enough to overwhelm.

your hand lifts, hesitates just slightly, then settles against his sleeve near his wrist.

his breath catches, subtle but real. he doesn’t pull away. “..is this okay?” you ask, giving him the space to say no. he nods, a little slower this time.

“y-yea” he says. “it is.” and it is. it’s small. it’s nothing, technically. but it lingers, even long after he leaves.

later, when he’s back above the city, the wind loud in his ears and the skyline stretching endless in front of him, something feels different.

and it’s not in a way he can point to, only enough to notice. when he pauses at the edge of a building, looking out over a hundred windows lit against the dark, each one holding a life he’ll never fully know.

he doesn’t wonder which one is yours this time. it’s enough to know you’re out there somewhere in it.

“…alright,” he murmurs to himself, softer now. then he pulls his mask into place, steps back, and lets himself fall forward into the open air, catching himself a second later like he always does.

only now, there’s something else threaded into it, and it isn’t just responsibility. not just instinct either.

it’s extravagantly warmer. something that feels, dangerously, like he has somewhere to return to... someone.

taglist : @coralbluess @emeraldb954801 (sorry for repost 💔)

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finally guys 💔 goodness IM SORRY!! im working on a master list sometime soon. also lmk if you wanna be added to my tag list!!