Chapter Text
“...and while secondary gender characteristics most commonly develop during a first presentation, you can expect to see any variation of ‘delay.’ Those characteristics include but are not limited to: fang elongation, heightened senses, particularly smell and taste, increased skin sensitivity…”
Izuku’s pen pokes another hole into his notebook paper. He curses under his breath watching the ink spill onto the page below and well around the puncture’s rim. Dabbing at the ink with his shirt sleeve, feeling it seep through to his wrist, Izuku starts his notetaking anew two lines down. Not for the first time, he wonders if he’s being excessive. This is only the fourth lesson of their Sex Ed course but between class notes, homework, and extracurricular essays that he’s not even sure Aizawa-sensei reads, Izuku’s on journal number 6. He can’t help himself.
“This is not an exhaustive list of characteristics, so don’t feel like you’re missing out if you experience one and not another, or none at all. Presentation is, first and foremost, diverse. But if you’re worried, you can always visit Recovery Girl.”
A couple voices across the classroom shudder. Kaminari thumps his head down onto his desk and Kirishima burns a brighter red than his hair.
Not one member of Class A is a stranger to Recovery Girl’s kisses, but. Just. Battlefield wounds are much easier to show up for. Izuku doesn’t even know how he’d begin to ask Recovery Girl any of the myriad questions he has about his body and everything it’s doing (and everything it’s not doing). Which, of course, is part of the issue. Which, of course, is why he’s six notebooks down.
“Yeah, yeah,” Aizawa-sensei continues, eyes rolling up to the ceiling. He has scooted his desk chair out of the way to display the same projector graphic from their first class of this course; a diagram from their textbook depicting three bodies that would look uncomfortably close to crime scene chalk outlines if it weren’t for the pastel-coloured text blocks and bubble lettering. Arrows point to elongated fangs in the first body, droplets of sweat on the third. The body in the middle doesn’t have quite as many text bubbles around it, and not a single arrow pointing its way, just a line of text above its smiling head saying Beta.
Izuku doesn’t look at this page much.
“...tell me the name of the medications taken to conceal these characteristics?”
Fuck! Izuku hasn’t been paying attention. The tailend of Aizawa-sensei’s question rings a bell from last week’s assignment so he flips back through his notes but this is the problem with writing down everything he learns, with finding every single detail important; nothing’s ever where he needs it.
He’s halfway through the mini dissertation he’d written, god, when Yaoyorozu raises her hand. Damn.
Aizawa-sensei inclines his head. “Yaoyorozu.”
“Suppressants, Aizawa-sensei.” Izuku hears a sigh or two at her sweet voice.
“Correct. Suppressants can be a pill, a patch, a gel, taken daily, weekly, monthly. Administered properly, they effectively ‘suppress’ an individual’s secondary gender characteristics until the medication wears off.”
Izuku raises his hand.
“Midoriya.”
“Does that hurt?”
Aizawa-sensei shakes his head. “Not typically. Suppressants are more often than not taken to provide relief, if anything.”
It blows Izuku’s mind. He can’t imagine living in a body where paring back its natural functions is a relief. He can’t imagine what that kind of body must experience day-to-day.
He raises his hand again.
Aizawa-sensei’s mouth twitches what Izuku hopes is fondly. “Yes.”
“What sorts of characteristics might someone want to suppress, sensei?”
“Pre-rut or pre-heat symptoms, most commonly. Cycles can be uncomfortable, painful, difficult to plan for. Suppressants can help alleviate some of the worst symptoms until such a time that the alpha or omega is comfortable enough to cycle.”
Wow. Medicine can do that? It can stop a cycle in its tracks? Izuku feels his eyes sparkle. Dynamic medication. Such an advanced field of study! Such interesting history, such incredible strides.
There’s just one thing. Izuku lifts his hand.
“Go ahead, Midoriya.” Aizawa-sensei nods.
“Ah, sensei. You said ‘pre-rut or pre-heat,’ just now. Are there any suppressants in development that could be helpful for betas?”
The room runs silent. It hadn’t even been that loud before. Pens scratching, fingers tapping. Izuku’s question carves a hole in all that cheerfully mundane classroom noise and in it, he can hear more questions, unasked. What would betas even need to suppress? They don’t have ruts, or heats, or scents; what do they have? Where’s the arrow in the textbook for this?
Izuku wishes he knew. He’s looked for it far too many times; the Betas section of their textbook is a fraction of the size of the others.
Aizawa-sensei is graceful, as usual. Staid in the face of adversity, especially teenage confusion. His expression isn’t pitying, nor his voice consoling. As far as he’s concerned, it’s just another question in just another class.
“The study of beta-specific suppressants is still ongoing. It’s been a slower process overall but the pace has picked up much more in recent years. I’ll be making a note of any recent developments and adding it to these lessons.”
Izuku’s smile feels uncertain. “That’d be helpful, sensei. Thank you.”
Aizawa-sensei nods once more. The lesson continues. The classroom noise resumes.
Something pointy hits Izuku’s right temple.
“Ow.” A pencil bounces off his desk and rolls onto the floor, then across to the desk next to his. Izuku looks up.
“You good?” Kacchan mouths.
Izuku’s chest hollows and fills at once. He smiles a little more certain. “I’m okay.”
Kacchan nods and faces the front of the classroom once more. He’s not taking any notes at all. Slouched back in his chair, tie loose, shirt untucked, hands in his pockets, he looks as bored as ever. Still. Interested enough to ask if Izuku is okay.
Izuku looks back down at his notebook. He’d finally found the page he’d been looking for. Aizawa-sensei’s earlier question stares up at Izuku in his scratchy handwriting, the last question that their homework that night had asked of them.
What is the name of the medications taken to subdue, or pause, the presentation of secondary gender characteristics?
Izuku’s answer had taken him right to the very end of the page. He hadn’t wanted to start a new one and leave it barely filled. He’d written down a question of his own off to the side, in the margins.
betas have secondary gender characteristics too! when will there be suppressants for those?
He squishes an answer beneath it.
nobody really knows
*
“Aaaaand what about this one?”
Izuku squints at the page, the detailed diagram of a bared mouth beneath Kaminari’s pointing finger, fangs protruding.
“Hmm. Looks like day three to four of a rut cycle.” He taps the page himself. “See the lower lip? It’s got impressions from where the fangs pressed in on days one and two at their full length. The fangs are still out but they’re not reaching that low anymore, they’ve receded almost by half. Typical late-stage rut, I’d say.”
Kaminari blows out an awed but exhausted breath, scrawling the number 3 beneath the diagram. “Mmkay, got it.” He peers, reproachful, at the blank lines further down the page, calling for an explanation of his answer. “Uhh. Could ya say all that again a little slower…?”
Kacchan shoves a foot out and catches Kaminari in the shin.
“Owww??”
“You’re crowding up my kitchen. Move.”
“But this is so haaard,” Kaminari whines, hobbling back towards the common area, taking tomorrow’s assignment with him. “And Midoriya’s so smaaaart.”
“You fuck enough alphas. Just guess.”
Izuku blushes.
Kaminari scoffs. “Yeah, you’d know, huh.”
Izuku blushes hard.
A wooden spoon fills his vision before he can try and come up with an excuse not to look at all that coy in Kaminari’s eyes. “Open.”
A spot of steaming sauce bubbles in the spoon’s head, dangerously scarlet already. Izuku leans forward, careful not to dislodge himself from his perch on the kitchen countertop next to the stove where the rest of the sauce simmers. He takes the spoon between his lips. Kacchan tilts it further into his mouth without even looking at him, eyes still focused on his cooking.
“What’s it need.”
Izuku swallows. It’s a little sweet and a lot hot, but he already knows the answer. “More spice, Kacchan.”
Kacchan grins down at his pan. “’S right.”
Izuku kicks his socked heels back against the kitchen cupboards. Kacchan’s elbow brushes Izuku’s arm as he gets back to work. Izuku would worry about sitting too close, crowding the kitchen, but Kacchan would bark at him if he tried to shift even an inch away. For so long their lives were so full of arm’s length, so much so that Izuku hadn’t been able to believe it the first time Kacchan had made him sit here. A dorm full of people that Kacchan can’t stand in his space, and Izuku who he won’t let leave it.
So now he watches Kacchan cook. He smells pepper and ginger and garlic and tomato. Other spices he can’t name off the top of his head. Nothing else, though. Nothing else.
“Midoriyaaaa.”
“God, what?” Kacchan answers for him, growling back down at his pan.
“I wasn’t talking to you!” Kacchan’s barking doesn’t scare the intruder off, never has. Izuku always wonders if that’s an alpha thing.
“Hi, Kirishima.”
Kirishima barrels up with his own homework, baring shark teeth in an easy grin.
“Help me out with this one? The textbook’s kinda vague, figured you might know.” He leans his back against the counter on Izuku’s other side, away from the stove. Izuku peers at Kirishima’s page, all filled out except for one last question.
Now. Izuku knows Kirishima means well. He knows everyone does. But sometimes he wonders how people would feel if he went around asking every alpha in the building how long a typical rut lasts, or how long their fangs can grow, or the average diameter of a knot. How they’d feel if he asked every omega about cycle cramps, or hunger pangs, or increased slick production during heat.
“Mm. Betas don’t really present in any specific sense,” Izuku explains. “We don’t have heats or ruts, so there’s no cycle where a scent can materialise. We can develop secondary gender characteristics like everyone else but not all at once, not like alphas and omegas, so. Uh. Yeah. I guess it just is sorta vague.”
Kirishima nods slowly, pencil scratching over his page. “Whoa.”
Izuku winces. “Did that help?”
“You kidding? It’s more than the textbook could tell me.” He beams. “It’s so cool!”
Izuku smiles, small but pleased. He doesn’t know if he would ever say it like he’s just finding out about a new species of animal, but, yeah. He thinks it’s cool, too.
“Alright, out. Out,” Kacchan demands, pushing at Kirishima’s shoulders. The stove’s off, stew still bubbling with residual heat. “Blocking half the damn drawers, I need bowls.”
“Oh, you’re done? Can I have some?”
“No,” Kacchan says without missing a beat, though, as always, along with the other rice-packed bowls he’s had resting next to the stove since before Izuku even got here, he’s made enough for the whole dorm.
“Midoriyaaaa. Tell him to be nice.”
Izuku scoffs. “He doesn’t listen to me.”
“Yeah, he does.”
Izuku jumps about an inch off the counter, almost braining himself on the cabinets above.
“You’ve—ow—You’ve gotten way too good at stealth recently.”
Shinsou winks, reaching over Izuku for the corner of the cabinet that just dented his skull. “Watch your head.”
“Oh, you can definitely tell him to be nice!” Kirishima grins, shoving a hand into Shinsou’s hair. The playful ruffle would make it a mess if it didn’t already kind of look like that all the time.
Shinsou scoffs but lets the roughousing continue, recovering a glass from the cupboard. “Yeah, bet I could.” He cuts his eyes toward Kacchan, corner of his mouth turned up a little. “Not playing nice over here, Bakugou?”
Kacchan knows better. He flips him off.
“Ew. The girls were right, we can smell all of you posturing three floors up.”
Ashido. She bounces her way into the already-packed kitchen with her nose wrinkling. Her cloud of pink hair barely makes it above shoulder level, but she pops up onto her toes to reach Kirishima’s cheek, to plant a small, sweet peck there. Then she reaches up higher to flick his forehead.
Kirishima flushes, moony-eyed and apologetic. “Bakugou started it.”
Kacchan opens his mouth, ready to let an insult fly. Shinsou’s eyes flash in his direction. He shuts it.
“Uh-huh, I’m sure he did.” Kacchan gets a forehead flick too, looks so incensed by it that Izuku hides a laugh behind his hand. Poorly. Ashido glances his way and grins, pink cheeks puffing up.
She pulls Izuku off the counter and over to the common area, filling up now, the rest of Class A flowing in from their rooms, the gym, the fields glowing green under early evening sunlight through the window. “C’mon, I’m kidnapping you. Smells like a damn cave in there.”
Kirishima calls, “Yeah, and you’re not helping!”
Ashido’s laugh peals bright and airy around the common room, presses against the high ceilings, curls warm into Izuku’s ears. He laughs too, tries to fill his chest with the mirth, with something other than the hollow feeling that wants so badly to crawl all over him all of a sudden.
He pokes his nose out a little. Inhales nice and deep. Pepper and ginger and garlic and tomato. Other spices he can’t name. Everything from before and nothing more.
Izuku won’t profess to know what caves smell like, but he’s sure they smell like something.
*
Night falls slowly on UA this time of year. Evening stretches itself out until its very last golden dregs, then night swells atop, cool blue before ink black. Most nights, that transition finds almost all of Class A stuffed in the common area with a movie. Not everyone watches; some find a moonlit corner to finish up homework, others just need background noise to eat dinner. All of them use it as an excuse to stay close.
There’s a lot more to that closeness than shared trauma. Izuku knows it, can feel it, if only the edges. Someone will shift on one side of the room, and somebody else on the other side will shift back, an equal and opposite reaction to something Izuku can’t quite sense himself. Someone will rub at their neck, and someone else will sigh, lungs filling and emptying, satisfied. Izuku will just keep watching the movie.
He’s sitting next to a very sleepy Uraraka, whose eyes had stayed half-lidded through most of the first act, whose light snores are now blowing her hair into and out of her face through the second. Back when movie nights first began, she was the only person who let Izuku whisper ad nauseum about that night’s pick almost all the way through. Todoroki used to listen, but unlike Uraraka, he’d fall asleep while Izuku was rambling. Iida used to Shush! him (louder than Izuku was ever even talking, if you ask him). Kacchan still tolerates it sometimes, but only when it’s an All Might movie, since he’s seen them all just as many times as Izuku has.
Kacchan’s on the other side of the room tonight, shoved into the corner of a couch with Shinsou on the other end, Kaminari draped languidly between them. There’s a frown trying to look convincing on Kacchan’s face, but when Kaminari pushes the soles of his feet against Kacchan’s thigh, kneading, Kacchan lets him. Kacchan lets him. Izuku will just keep watching the movie.
Turning a blind eye isn’t so hard, and Izuku’s sense of smell definitely won’t pick up on anything distracting, but his hearing works just fine. He hears it a little while later when Kaminari’s sigh tips up at the end, high and soft. He hears it last a beat too long for simple satisfaction. He hears whoever’s still awake on his own side of the room sigh in kind.
Izuku shifts around in his seat. In a way, that is his own equal and opposite reaction, but it’s not intrinsic. It’s curious. More than a little jealous.
The jealousy burns bitter-envy bright the second he sees what got that sigh going. Kaminari has tucked his face into Shinsou’s neck, damn near purring there, sweet and low but restless. His feet have crawled up the side of Kacchan’s thigh, toes curling folds into his sweatpants. The lithe length of him, so relaxed only a few minutes of movie time ago, is livewire tense. He’s all… twitchy.
Shinsou doesn’t seem bothered. But for the barest tilt of his head, allowing Kaminari to nuzzle deeper, he looks about as bored as he was when the movie started. Kacchan, too. Not a single response to Kaminari’s toes digging too close for Izuku’s comfort, except for that divot between his brows. It’s smoothed right out.
Kaminari whines again. Sniffs wetly. Someone else, Yaoyorozu, Izuku thinks, coughs delicately.
The tableau they make is intimate, and alien, and weirdly still, even for all Kaminari’s squirming. Izuku doesn’t really know what he’s looking at until the picture moves wholescale, all three of them.
Shinsou turns his head to look at Kacchan. Kacchan looks back. A grin crawls its way across Kacchan’s mouth. Kaminari gasps.
In near-perfect unison, they stand up, coax Kaminari to his kneading feet, tuck him between them, and leave. Not a word shared to each other, to Kaminari, to the room. It had happened so quickly but they’d moved so slowly. Unhurried. Like there’s no rush whatsoever to get to what’s waiting for them upstairs.
Somebody whispers something. Somebody else giggles.
Izuku doesn’t feel like watching the movie anymore.
Maybe he’s read enough books to make more educated guesses, maybe he should’ve known, but he can never really know, can he? He can’t sense when an omega has just fallen into heat until two alphas pick him up and cart his shivery body away.
If Izuku’s textbooks have taught him anything, the whole room must’ve smelled it. The heavy breaths, the coughs, the whispering, the giggles. An inside joke that everyone’s in on that Izuku can’t even laugh at. But laughing’s the last thing he wants to do right now anyway.
Oddly rousing, this jealousy. The sense of inadequacy is no good but the jealousy doesn’t feel quite the same way, doesn’t feel sludgy and sickening like slow-working poison. Bright though it may be, Izuku’s envy doesn’t stay caustic. It’s simmering like the stew stuck in his belly. Scarlet. Slightly sweet.
It’s the nearness, probably. The absolute certainty of what has happened right in front of his eyes, the somehow-even-stronger certainty of what’s happening away from them. The ease of it all, the suggestion of frequency. Shinsou’s gaze, promising. Kaminari’s anticipatory gasp. Competence in Kacchan’s grin.
“Deku? You okay?”
Uraraka, stirred awake, pokes at Izuku’s shoulder. He’s still staring at the empty couch, has to turn bodily away from it to face Uraraka’s concern.
“Mm, ‘m good.”
She tilts her head. Gentle frown. “Not liking the movie?”
There’s a movie?
Izuku shrugs, smiling. “It’s okay. Kinda tired, though.”
She sees right through him like he’s paper thin, but knowing when there’s more to what Izuku says also means knowing he won’t share it. She’s gonna let it slide and it’ll be more than Izuku deserves because friends should speak their mind to their other friends, but Izuku’s other other friends are fucking a few floors up and Izuku doesn’t have words for that. Just thoughts and all the things those thoughts make him wanna do.
He works himself out from beneath the blanket they’d been sharing, aircon running goosebumps up his thighs. He’d lament his choice to wear shorts but they’re easier to take off.
“I’ll see you around?” He throws Uraraka a smile he hopes is encouraging.
She nods slowly. “Night.”
So that hadn’t worked. Izuku will buy her breakfast sometime this week if he’s got any brain cells after this.
*
“Hhh—ahh…”
It feels so, so good right here. The hitch of his hips where the pillow meets him at the very tippy top of his forward rock. Curving himself up and across the fabric, the warm drag under warmer skin, both sticky now, getting stickier. Izuku loves it like this. He loves it so much.
Another pillow’s caught between his teeth though he doesn’t need it anymore, has long since learned how to keep quiet. It’s more so for the feel of it now, for feeling like he’s feeling too good to shut up. Like he could get himself that gone. The cotton will dry his mouth out before long but he still can’t help giving into it for a little while, the drooly desperation of it all.
Izuku’s shorts barely even made it across the threshold of his bedroom before they were off him. His shirt’s still on because it’s still pretty cool in here and Izuku isn’t even really working up a sweat. Too late, he’s too tired, knew he would be even as he knew he wasn’t gonna be able to sleep until he’d done this. The ache stuck itself nice and heavy between his hips and mounted as he’d headed upstairs, clamouring all the way along until Izuku had pressed his bare pussy to his pillow and rocked. Now it’s just a matter of tucking his hips in again and again until the ache diffuses all warm and heavy over him, until orgasm.
“Hahh… mm.” The sound rings in Izuku’s throat, sweetened by a wet swallow. He loves to keep it like this, just like this, sometimes the best way to feel is to fuck yourself the only way you know how and nothing further but oh he wants more. Izuku wants more than what he knows, more than what he can give himself. These tight little humps, his tight little body, the pleasure he can rub into himself with cupped fingers on his clit. It’s all so good but it’s also known.
Izuku doesn’t release pheromones to self-soothe. He doesn’t slick up as easily or as much. He could lock a knot if he got one but it’d have to fit inside first, and without pheromones to relax him, he’s vice-tight. If his body is to be believed, Izuku’s not built for the sex he wants. His brain will always want it more than his body ever could.
He’s fucked a little notch into the fabric of his pillow. On the next fuck forward his clit slips into it and catches and the whine in his throat tips too high, small and plaintive. His throat stings, signalling tears. Izuku squeezes his eyes shut and works himself over his pillow, wincing. He’s been going long enough. He can feel a little dot of wetness pressing at his hole, building up there, not enough yet to spill out and down, to ease his slide. His pussy’s starting to feel sore. It’ll be rubbed red before he comes.
He can’t stop though. Feeling good feels good no matter what he’s built for, he just wishes he could be built for all of it. The inside part. The overwet glide and the slick stringing between thighs and hips and the sopping, steady beat of fucking as far as you can go, fucking until skin meets skin, then doing it again, and again, and again. Izuku can only dream of how good it must feel to get it like that.
Kaminari’s probably getting it like that. Kaminari’s getting it like that right now because his body will try to turn itself inside out without it.
What must it be like, to need it like that? Does Izuku not need it too, right now? Isn’t this needing it?
He remembers how Kaminari had tucked his face into Shinsou’s neck, restless and eager and wanting. He remembers how that had soothed and excited him all at once.
Izuku dips his head down and tries it for himself. Swipes his forehead back and forth over the pillow beneath his face, presses into plush fabric, trying to feel something, feeling nothing. The movement feels awkward. Stunted. Like learning how to walk. Maybe he needs an actual person and their actual glands to nudge his nose against but for all Izuku would actually be able to smell, it probably wouldn’t feel much different from the pillow.
With Kacchan, though. With Kacchan…
“Fuck,” Izuku groans, hips picking up speed. Why does it always surprise him? Why is he always caught so off guard by Kacchan entering his mind’s eye, this mind’s eye? It’s not like he hasn’t come to the thought of Kacchan every chance he can, not like he can come to anything else at this point. Why’s it always such a shock to put Kacchan in place, to fit him against Izuku’s body whether it’s rutting on its front or writhing on its back?
Kacchan might not be gentle, Izuku thinks. Alphas often aren’t, and it thrills Izuku to think that Kacchan wouldn’t be any different. He’d listen to Izuku, he’d take his cues and work with them, wouldn’t hurt him more than Izuku’s body would allow, but he’d give Izuku’s body more than it thinks it should allow. He’d make his fingers fit before his cock, before his knot. He’d work Izuku sloppy-wet even before that. He’d take his time, not for going slow but for going endlessly. He’d know how to fuck Izuku because he knows how to fuck at all. Izuku won’t smell pretty or sweet or soft but he’d smell like sex all the same and Kacchan would give it to him like he’d give it to someone who needs it.
Izuku’s hole throbs around its barely-wet edges. His slick finally ekes its way out, a thick, sticky drop of it rolling down to where his clit meets his pillow. Izuku readjusts to spread it along the path of his fuck and shoves his hips forward faster, buts himself right up against where it feels good, where it feels better now that it’s wetter.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he coaxes himself, eggs himself on, succumbing to it now, the mindless rhythm of wanting to come, of being close.
Kacchan would feel so good to grind against. Firm and warm and alive. Izuku imagines the little puddle he has leaked dripping onto Kacchan’s thigh, not soaking into fabric but coating skin. It’d be so much easier to move, it’d feel so much better. He’d work himself up like that and Kacchan would hold him and talk to him and say mean things that feel good and he’d be stroking himself maybe, oh, maybe, stroking himself to get ready for Izuku like Izuku would get ready for him and he’d let Izuku grind on that too, don’t you think, on the thing he can’t even say in his mind because it makes him so shy and Kacchan would like him shy, he’d like him so much, he’d like him without pheromones or heat or slick, he’d really really like Izuku the way Izuku really really likes him.
So typical of him, to come from the thought of reciprocation. Izuku comes gently, in little frissons, shuddering into his orgasm with his hips pushed forward, ass clenched, trying to make it last. It trips down his spine and sears between his hips and lingers in the tips of his toes. He feels a little like he has a spinning top for a head, pleasure dizzying and colourful. He collapses flat to his mattress, utterly spent, shivering giddily when the last of his orgasm pushes itself out in slow, sluggish blurts between his legs.
Now he’s worked up a sweat. It dries in cooling lines down his neck and back, and Izuku burrows himself beneath his blanket before the shivers start to truly wrack him. He cushions his head on crossed arms, lays his cheek flat against one wrist, and breathes warm air over the hairs on the other.
Feeling good feels good. No matter what. The other side of it, though. The after-feeling-good. His sore, empty pussy, the small streak of wetness on his pillow. His twin bed with all the space in the world for him and him alone. Hearing only his own heartbeat.
Kaminari’s likely got at least a couple more days until his heat burns out. That’s what Izuku’s textbook says. He wonders how Shinsou and Kacchan can both fit in Kaminari’s bed with Kaminari between them.
*
“Did you sleep well?”
Stupid. Dumb. Can’t shut up to save his life. Izuku hides his wince in his hand towel, patting his face dry and panting.
Kacchan doesn’t answer him right away, and why should he? Izuku’s being weird. Cagey. Asking questions he normally wouldn’t because they’re way, way past the point of caring about how each other slept, at least enough to know asking about it is pointless. That’s not the kind of friendship they’ve got, never has been.
“Sure. Yeah, slept fine,” Kacchan responds in time, tugging the hem of his shirt up to wipe at his own forehead. Kind of redundant, Izuku thinks. The shirt’s dripping with more sweat than Kacchan’s face. Izuku can count Kacchan’s abs through it. He’s pretty sure it’s why he lost their last round.
“Mm. That’s good.” Izuku snaps his water bottle open and chugs about half his body weight.
Kacchan snorts at him. Playing along with what he seems to have already accepted is Izuku’s chosen display of oddness for the day, he offers back, “You?”
Izuku chugs some more. Shrugs one shoulder.
“Not too bad.”
It’d taken him about two hours to fall asleep and he’d had two nightmares.
He can’t really remember what had happened in either of them, just knows he’d woken up shuddering atop the pillow he’d rutted himself to clearly-not-enough exhaustion on, mouth open on a scream he’d hoped was silent. Twice. Dreading something. Stomach tense with exertion, or from holding down vomit.
He never quite shook that unease, had hoped it was nothing that a good sparring session couldn’t solve. He was surprised Kacchan had agreed, certain he had a heat to attend to, but Kacchan had shown up even earlier than Izuku, and Izuku hadn’t dared to ask. Two hours and a few losses too many later, Izuku is realising just how deep the disquiet runs. Broad daylight, not a single scary corner for monsters to hide, and he’s still swallowing all this water into what feels like a pitch-black pit.
Come to think of it, his whole body feels similarly emptied. Wrung out and overwrought. Sapped. He’s felt like this enough to be able to differentiate it from the flu, or the common cold, or any number of illnesses that wreak havoc on UA’s halls throughout the year. Enough to have looked into it on every forum, search engine, and encyclopedia he could find, coming up even emptier-handed every time. Enough for that to be significant.
“Oi.”
Kacchan’s glaring at him. Izuku knows that that’s just how he looks when he’s concerned but it reads more, now, like being weirded out, like whatever Izuku’s got going on is finally starting to ring warning bells. Which Izuku thinks is a little unfair, seeing as Kacchan’s not the one having to live with the bells ringing in his own damn head.
“I’m fine, it’s fine.” Izuku plasters on a smile like shitty wallpaper. Then, muttering, “I’m glad one of us slept good, at least.”
Bitterly suggestive, and if Kacchan doesn’t pick up on it he’s been blasting his quirk off too close to his ears. Izuku doesn’t know what’s gotten into him and wants it out of him. He remembers the handful of times he’s felt like this before, like not himself. Knows that he doesn’t know what to do about it, knows that nobody else knows either. It’ll be a matter of waiting it out ‘til it subsides but he doesn’t like not knowing how many more times he’s going to lash out at his friends because of it. Even if the friends might be the cause of it. With their knowing glances and pheromone telepathy and—
“Hey.”
Kacchan shoves Izuku up against a wall. They’ve made it as far as the hallway leading to the showers and it’s echoey in here; the thud of Izuku’s back against tile sounds three times. He blinks up at Kacchan’s stare, turned even more disapproving.
“I’m sorry,” Izuku mumbles. “Sorry, I’m. I dunno. I’m being weird.”
“Yeah, you are. Fuck’s up with you?”
Izuku abruptly feels like crying. “Don’t know.” Crying and sleeping. He’s so tired.
Kacchan rolls his eyes and manages to make it look fond. Forgiving. Izuku winces again at having acted so out of turn he needs to be forgiven for it.
“You got shit to say, you’ll say it. Yeah?”
Probably not, Izuku thinks, and Kacchan probably knows it, but Izuku nods anyway, and Kacchan accepts anyway. ‘Shit to say’ is categorically not ‘shit Kacchan would want to hear,’ not least of all if Izuku won’t be able to get any of it out without sounding snide.
He feels left out. Biologically. Sexually, consequently. He can’t tell Kacchan how it felt to watch him disappear into the shadows with an alpha at his side and an omega under his arm. There aren’t words for feeling that bereft, for the fact of that feeling entering his fucking dreams. His body, his bones. He can’t tell Kacchan that all of the medical study in the entire history of the entire world seems to have circled right around this part, left a gap hundreds of thousands of years wide. He can’t ask Kacchan for the one thing he thinks might alleviate this feeling, not least of all because Kacchan can’t even sense that he wants it, not like he’d be able to with an omega, even an alpha. Izuku’s a dead zone and that’s why they’ve known each other for years and Kacchan still has to ask what the fuck’s up with him.
But all the same, even unwittingly, it’s more attention than anyone’s ever given this part of Izuku. Most kids growing up hadn’t even known what to do with Izuku, let alone bully him. He remembers those playground days, barren and lonely, remembers his classmates poking their noses in the air sniffing for a scent Izuku hadn’t had, not even an early one. Kacchan’s fists and feet had felt like kindness just for the fact of ignoring Izuku’s emptiness, just for the fact of touching him at all. Staring now, frowning at him from where he stands a fair few inches taller, is even kinder.
“Thank you, Kacchan.” Izuku’s eyes feel wet.
Kacchan groans and shoves a sweaty palm into Izuku’s face. That would’ve meant true danger not too long ago. Now, Izuku just grimaces.
“Stop,” Kacchan complains, mouth twisting up all irritated and grossed out. “So sappy all the time, ‘m just saying. Not a big deal.”
“You smell bad,” Izuku protests.
“I what?” Now his palms are crackling, oh dear.
“No, like—like sweat! You just smell sweaty!”
“Oh.” Kacchan steps away, calms his quirk down. “Right.”
Right.
“I’m sure you smell fine, though,” he says. For some reason. “You know. Other than the sweat. Bet it’s nice.”
Kacchan raises an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, fucker, it is.”
Izuku swallows, stomach flipping. “Yeah, that’s… that’s what I said. I bet.”
Kacchan rolls his eyes, again. Fond, again. “Take a shower, nerd. Tellin’ me I smell like sweat…”
He heads off to the showers first, grumbling under his breath, so scarily like Izuku that it startles a laugh from him. That weird, hollow pressure inside lifts for the length of it. Izuku dares to hope for a second that he doesn’t need as much as he thinks he does to be rid of it for good, for a while. Maybe laughter’s all it’s asking for, maybe friendship.
Until he walks into the showers and sees the scratches down Kacchan’s back. Then it’s back like it never left.