Work Text:
When the call comes in, Izuku is seventy-five percent sure it’s a joke.
It’s right in the middle of his hour-long Monday lunch break—literally right in the middle, half an hour through, down to the second—that his phone buzzes on his office desk with enough strength for it to shake, to inch itself off the table and clatter onto the floor.
(Really, that was entirely on him for choosing to set his phone on the very corner of the desk. But the fates shall digress.)
Cursing, Izuku picks it up (gingerly, almost unwillingly, with his forefinger and his thumb posed to pinch) and sets it back onto the black walnut desk; with the tip of his second knuckle he swipes to answer the call. With the other hand, he wipes at his mouth.
“H–Hello?”
The sound crackles on the other end. There comes the voice of one really, really bored cop:
“Hello. Am I speaking to Midoriya?”
Izuku blinks, looking down at the contact. It's a number he doesn’t recognize, area code from one prefecture over.
(Did he miss out on another PT appointment? Had he scheduled another strange brand deal while drunk for the third time this year?)
Izuku babbles for all but ten seconds.
“Uh—”
“Sir, are you there?” The man pauses, then licks his lips so aggressively that the sound of his tongue unsticking from his palate resonates across the radio waves. “Deku. Am I speaking to Deku currently?”
Izuku blinks again.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, you are. Although I don't really go by that name very often. Just Midoriya is fi—”
“I don't really care about that.”
(For the third time, Izuku blinked.)
“Right. Is this—?”
“My name is Hitsuji, I'm calling from the Minato Ward police station in Tokyo,” the man says. “You're Dynamight’s emergency contact, correct?”
With weight on it, his heart drops to his stomach.
“Kacchan?” Izuku frowns. “You're from the police?”
“No, I'm not Kacchan, this is Hitsuji.”
(Fourth of the hour. Shut, un-shut. Who the hell is this guy?)
“Right. Yes.” Izuku swallows. “Did— did something happen to Kacch— to Dynamight?”
On the other end came a silence so abrupt and so unbelievably dead that Izuku thought, for a fraction of a stupid second, that the station had simply imploded in the seconds between his breaths.
“He's been severely incapacitated,” Hitsuji deadpans.
Izuku chokes on his water. “Incapacitated?”
“Nothing lethal. Hit by a quirk, if you will. Whatever.” The man clears his throat. “You can come get him whenever you can, although as soon as possible would be ideal. If I recall, you’re currently working at UA, thus I’d recommend you begin your journey about fifteen minutes ago. Sir, Deku, Sir.”
“You don't have to call me that,” Deku repeats. “I really don't—” He, too, pauses to think, although only for a fraction of a second. “Never mind. I'll— uh, be there shortly.”
𖥸
Kacchan is a plant.
Not in, say, the metaphorical sense—vegetative, unresponsive, unconscious, incapable of communicating whether it be verbally or non verbally. No, Kacchan was quite literally a plant.
Izuku stares at the mound of dirt wrapped so carefully with a few layers of paper towel, cupped in the hands of the woman standing in front of him. And stares, and stares.
“This is Ka—” Sharply he intakes. “This is Dynamight?”
The officer nods. He stares some more.
“It was, ah, a quirk accident,” she explains, although that part doesn’t really need to be explained. “My colleague found him on the scene after we apprehended the perp.”
Funnily enough, the plant itself isn’t all that big nor imposing nor very impressive. It’s not like the thing is ugly, necessarily.
(If any version of Kacchan wasn't objectively visually pleasing, Izuku doesn't know what he'd do. What Kacchan would do with the knowledge.)
“You didn’t, um—” Izuku tilts his head and starts to mime the vague shape of a cylinder. “Like, get him a pot, or something?”
Morosely the woman shakes her head. “We thought it should be a ritual reserved for the emergency contact, or whoever came to get him.”
(She says it—ritual, reserved, the doom and gloom of it all—a little like this state is permanent, like this is a to-do list for a funeral of a loved one, a race against the clock and a set of tasks to which some greater purpose is tied. Izuku pictures himself having to spend the rest of his life taking care of Kacchan like this, his best friend now made of nothing but chlorophyll and stem and leaf, amalgamation of chemicals.)
He pales, chest constricting.
“Is he— Is he going to be stuck like this?” In little steps he approaches, his hands splayed out before him.
She shakes her head, ardent. “No, no, this is very much temporary. We don’t know for how long, because, well, the guy refuses to say much.” She glances down at the leaves. “But he did confirm that this state is not in fact permanent. We just…”
“Don’t know how long it'll be?” he completes. When the officer acquiesces, his bottom lip worries itself between his teeth. “Oh, Kacchan,” he coos.
And maybe Izuku imagined it, hallucinated it. Maybe the earl grey he had this morning at the asscrack of dawn as he left his apartment had something laced in it. But, at his cooing, Plant Kacchan’s (Plantcchan’s?) leaves seem to rustle pleasantly, shake a little.
Izuku’s breath hitches in his throat. He glances up and back at the officer, who seems entirely oblivious. As their eyes meet—cloudy, turbulent grey to foliage green—she manages a smile.
“Well,” she says, “You’re free to take him home, Deku. You may contact his direct family to your own discretion, but we’ll maintain sole communication with you through your provided phone number in order to give you more information on the quirk as we receive it. One thing you must keep in mind, though,” she adds (and as Izuku perks up, attentive, his shoulders stiffening, she smiles a little wider), “Is that Dynamight must be treated like any other plant.”
Izuku’s brows shoot up his forehead. “Excuse me?”
Sheepishly she shrugs.
“One of the things the man did… reveal to us is that many have tried to feed his plants like, well… like regular people.”
Weirdly enough, she pulls Plantcchan closer to her chest, protective.
(It unsettles something within Izuku's chest, something that had its claws dug into the lining. In his pockets his fists clench and unclench.)
“Like regular people.”
“Serving them juice,” she provides helpfully, “Putting a little omurice on the dirt for breakfast. That kind of stuff. Allegedly, it never ended well.”
“I can imagine.”
“It seems as though the perp has some soft spot for Dynamight,” the officer adds. “A fanboy, I’m assuming. He made very specific instructions,” she tells him. “Which he did not seem to be very privy to dropping under different circumstances.”
Izuku purses his lips. “Interesting,” he strains. He tries not to clench his fists, glances down at the nametag on the woman’s uniform. “Can I have my Kacchan, now, Kaori-san?”
She blinks. “Oh! Yes,” she says. “Yes, you may. I apologize.”
Gingerly she places the paper towel in his open palms, and with a pang, Izuku realizes just how…small Kacchan really is in this state. If he were to hold him to his heart, the tallest leaves would barely tickle his top lip. He’s a tenth of his original size, by approximation and eyeballing, and all the very irrelevant knowledge Izuku just happens to have about human Kacchan’s body proportions.
(But how is he to take care of something so small, so easy to kill?)
There’s nothing left to say, or to do, or to advise, or to forbid, and so Izuku kicks the door open—as if he can do much else—and leaves.
𖥸
The first thing he does is look for a pot. The trip is fairly difficult with a mound of dirt in his hands and all the eyes very subtly and unsubtly watching him and judging him—but somehow he makes it onto the Shinkansen, then the subway, the bus, and into his own neighborhood where things are more familiar. To walk around a block where all they’d see is Hero Deku (with a naked plant in his hands) would be a little too ridiculous even for his standards, and the florist a few minutes from his apartment building knows him all too well from all the other little plants he’s tried to father over the past two years. So really, it’s all about comparing and contrasting consequences.
By virtue of the amount of times he's been here Izuku's fairly familiar with the layout of the store, able to leaf through the hanging vines and adjust his sinuses to the strong pungent scents in no time.
The florist greets him with a wave as she spots him, enthusiastically so. Kondo Tsubaki, her name was—and if you stuck around her long enough you could see fleur de lys bloom in her beige eyes, see glitter in her baby pink hair, and smell camellia coming off her in waves.
When he gets to the front desk and nods, Kondo glances down at Kacchan and gasps.
“Midoriya,” she says, elation in her tone, “Is that a new baby I'm seeing?” She smiles with all her teeth and slams her hands onto the counter; the surface blooms with sunflowers and tulips. “Please tell me you're trying at the plant dad thing again.”
(Izuku thinks, for a second, about being Kacchan's plant dad.)
Izuku cringes. “Not exactly.”
Kondo blinks at him. “Not exactly?”
He holds the plant up.
“This is Kacchan. I might have mentioned him a few times? I have to get him a pot.”
Kondo tilts her head and pouts. “Kacchan? Are you referring to the Kacchan who taught you how to take care of your second baby after you killed the first one?”
(Oh. Well. He'd been hoping the florist would forget about that one-off.)
He smiles to the best of his abilities. He really hopes no one else is in the store, eavesdropping on all of this.
“Yep,” he strains. “Right on.”
Kondo then frowns. “Correct me if I'm wrong, Midoriya, but is Kacchan not… a human? I do recall you showing me videos of him last year when you came in much more often, and he did seem to be a human.” Quieter she mumbles: “Although I could have been wrong. It's a little hard to tell with some of the quirks we have these days.” Then: “Have you been talking to me so enthusiastically about a plant baby all this time? One that actually lived?”
Izuku's face burns.
“Well—”
She leans forward and grazes a finger along the length of one of Kacchan's leaves. As she does so, the leaf quivers not out of force of gravity and simple motion physics, but a secret third thing. It's closer to a knee-jerk reaction or a reflex, like the brushing against a tickle spot.
The two of them watch as the little stem of the branch swerves back and away from her hand. Kondo gapes.
“Did your new baby just… move?”
(So it wasn't the earl grey, after all.)
“Kacchan can move?”
Kacchan shakes again, the same way he had at the police station.
“Kacchan can move,” Kondo affirms. “He’s sentient, I’m assuming.” She looks up. “Did the person who turned him tell you about this?”
Sheepishly Izuku averts his gaze.
“The person who turned Kacchan into this, ah, was arrested,” he admits. “They’re still getting him to talk.”
Her mouth forms an ‘O’. “You’re not here for advice, then, Midoriya?”
He shakes his head. “Just here to get Kacchan a pot. It’s— It’s the least I can do.”
Kondo takes a moment to think, one hand comically posed at her lips. When she’s done, she smiles with all her teeth.
“Come with me, then.”
Kondo brings him to the back of the store and through a door, where he's handed a nursery pot with holes poked through the bottom. Carefully, the two of them unwrap Kacchan from the paper towel around the dirt, place him in there.
When done, with Kacchan properly secured, she shuffles around under a desk for a bit, before rising and turning to Izuku with a paintbrush and a bottle of acrylic paint. Izuku tilts his head as he's handed the stuff; twists the bottle of paint, studies every inch of surface area.
“What are these for?”
There's a grunt, the thud of something falling to the ground. Kondo huffs, then peeks her head out up to her nose.
“To paint your pot!” she explains. When she rises, there’s black ceramic in her hands, square and smooth, of the perfect size. “I figured you’d like to dress your Kacchan up in his costume.”
Izuku takes a moment, then beams.
“Kondo-san, you are a genius.”
Twenty minutes later, their work is done: the lines in burnt orange aren’t entirely straight, and in fact look a little wonky even from afar, but Izuku figures there’s a charm to it. The two dots in the corner, too, tremble at the circumference, but with extra thought he and Kondo conclude that it’s all just… homey.
(It takes a second, but Izuku also figures Kacchan would like it, too.)
𖥸
With his best friend in one arm and his red-blue-yellow lanyard looped around the other, messenger bag slung across his back, Izuku taps in the code at his door and steps in.
“Welcome home, Kacchan!” Izuku pauses and makes a face, sheepish. “Or, well, welcome to my home.” He sets Kacchan on the counter, puts his fingers to his lips. “I don’t know how long you’ll be here, but it’ll— it'll have to be home for a while.”
Kacchan, as expected, does not respond. Not verbally, at least—instead, a single leaf at the very left edge quivers. Izuku makes his way over to the sink, grabbing a cup from the cabinet, smooth as he does so.
“I don’t think I need to water you again,” he mutters, pulling out his phone with one hand as he twists the knob with the other, slowly, carefully. He presses on the fingerprint reader, opens his search engine, starts to type. “You got quite a bit at Kondo’s shop. So I think you should be good for the next twelve hours or so?”
Izuku glances down at his phone, open on a search page. He realizes he doesn’t even know what plant Kacchan is.
(So, he calls up Kondo. Brief is the conversation, and slightly forgetful is his acquaintance, but the conclusion becomes that Kacchan is probably a maranta leuconeura, a prayer plant. She warns him that at night, he’ll see Kacchan’s leaves clam up and close, and that there’s no need to worry—this is just a thing they do. Further research—in other words, a scan using the lens app on his phone—confirms this, specifying that Kacchan is of a variety, a neon prayer plant.
He can’t really see what’s so neon about Kacchan, but figures that’s just how one names plants. With that, Izuku gives himself a framework.)
The first article he finds gives him nothing about specific watering habits, instead informs him that prayer plants need bright and indirect light; anything too direct isn’t any good for the leaves.
Izuku turns his head. Past his kitchen counter, across his palpably massive living space, are the windowed doors to the balcony, curtains open wide. Mid-April, the sun keeps a steady glow until well into the afternoon—if he were to put him down now, at ten past five, Kacchan’s guaranteed to get just enough sunlight as needed.
So he does exactly that. Izuku walks over, bends down to gently set Kacchan on the floor by the windowsill.
He gets a call right then, the contact name reading one he hasn’t heard from in… a while.
“Best Jeanist?”
“Midoriya. How are you?”
Izuku hesitates before answering. “Good!” he says, and then: “Is this about Kacchan?”
Jeanist hums, affirming just that. “I had to go through a lot of documents and police officers before finding you,” he replies with amusement at the ends of his words, with the sound of papers rustling in the background. “I was on the other end of town and had to find out through gossip on the street that Dynamight was incapacitated. First I thought he might be in the hospital.”
(At that Izuku winces.)
“Well, thank goodness he isn’t.”
“Very true. The Minato Station ended up calling me and telling me of his… chlorophyll state, but I thought they still had him in holding. I went there in a rush, only for them to tell me Great Explosion Muder God Dynamight was with his emergency contact. But, ah—” Jeanist sounds like he’s holding back a laugh. “He never set an emergency contact with the agency when he signed on. Only on his own government documents, so that took more digging on my part. You should ask him to change that when he is human again.”
“I— I will,” Izuku promises.
“Now that that’s over with,” Jeanist continues. “How is he?”
Izuku spares a sideways glance to Kacchan, whose branches veer towards him, kind of like he’s looking up at Izuku.
“He’s fine! He didn’t come in a pot, so I went to a local florist to get him one! I watered him over there, and, ah— Well, now I’m sort of waiting around. He doesn’t seem to be dying anytime soon.”
(At that, Kacchan’s leaves rustle.)
“Would you like me to make a statement about Dynamight’s current state?” Jeanist then asks. “I won’t specify where he’s currently staying unless you’d like me to, Midoriya.”
Izuku laughs. “I should ask Kacchan that first.”
“Sorry—?”
Izuku leans down. “Kacchan,” he asks. “Would you like Jeanist to make a statement about you being a plant?”
Izuku watches as Kacchan shrugs the way he had just before—two branches bobbing up and down.
“He says he isn’t sure. Perhaps we should keep it under wraps for now.”
Jeanist babbles on the other end.
“I see.”
He hangs up not long after that, wishing Izuku well with Plantcchan, a little confused.
The second article Izuku finds as soon as he’s in the silence of his own home tells him to water Kacchan only when the soil is about three quarters damp—so he sticks his index fingers into whatever soil surrounds Kacchan’s roots, feels around. It’s humid enough that dirt sticks, so he figures he should wait a little longer.
Easy enough. Izuku goes back to his phone again, and sets himself an alarm for a couple hours, right into the break of the evening. After a while, a few minutes staring at his ceiling, he strips to his tacky hero boxers, throws his dirt-grime dress shirt so that it hangs on his fan, slips on a tee, and collapses onto his couch.
𖥸
When Izuku wakes up, it’s to terrible cotton mouth and a banging migraine. As his eyes slowly unstick with crust and mucus residue, the first thing he feels is powerful, all-consuming hunger. He’s so hungry it aches, thrumming in his bones before he feels the rumble. He groans, clutching at his stomach as he tries sitting up.
For a moment, it’s like nothing’s happened at all. For a moment, his mind is as blank as it’s been for a while, focused on all but the meanings of things. He yawns, stretches his arms, cracks his knuckles. Thinks about dinner, about the next lesson plan, the next free night he has to go drinking with his colleagues and—
Far behind him comes the sound of leaves shaking, once, then twice.
Izuku stops. Slowly, he does a full twist of the torso, turning to stare at where he thinks the sound comes from. Through his balcony windows, sunset nears and the wind calms to a point. And on the floor, with its leaves drooping down, bristling angrily in a rhythm, making the pot shake every so often, is—
“Kacchan. Oh, my god.”
He gets up, walks over to Kacchan with his hands outstretched. When he reaches him, crouching down to stick a finger in the dirt, he realizes he’s well past the threshold of thirst.
“You’re all dried up already,” he coos. “And you’re drooping. I’m so sorry, Kacchan. I think I must’ve…”
Finger pressed to his mouth, he pulls his phone out of his pocket, turns it on, and realizes he hadn’t actually set his alarm in the first place; it was supposed to have rung a good forty-five minutes ago.
Kacchan rustles again, as if to say, moron.
Izuku grimaces. “Right, that’s all my fault, isn’t it?” He rises with Kacchan in his arms and walks over to the sink. “Shouldn’t have fallen asleep.”
For a beat, Kacchan does not move at all. Then, subtle, slow, a single leaf bobs up, then down.
Izuku sighs. “I guess so. Let’s not waste any time.”
He sets Kacchan onto the counter and starts to fill up a glass. As he finishes, his phone buzzes.
18:24
Definitely Not Eraserhead
Are you alright?
You left a little abruptly after lunch. No issue, just let me know if
you’ll be missing any further afternoons, Midoriya.
Hope everything is okay
Izuku
All’s well!
To an extent.
[IMAGE ID: Kacchan (plant) on the kitchen counter,
angled perfectly so that the orange ‘X’ faces the camera]
Might be a little busy over the week, though.
Ran into a bit of an emergency.
I will LYK!
Definitely Not Eraserhead
?
Izuku sends back a thumbs up, stuffs his phone in his pocket and keeps watering Kacchan, just until, as the article directs, he’s leaking out of the holes at the bottom. Carefully, meticulously, he wipes down the bottom of the pot, then stands back.
He beams. “That should keep you hydrated up until bedtime!” Then he stops. “Huh. Wait. Will you be sleeping, Kacchan? Do plants, ah, sleep?”
Kacchan looks like he takes a moment, before letting a few of his branches on either side bob up and down.
Maybe.
“Well,” he hums. “We'll know if Kacchan gets back to normal. Since you can’t really talk to me, that is.”
The thought of it pangs him again: if he gets back to normal, only if. He doesn't get too long to dwell on it, to drown—his stomach starts to ache again in hunger. Lips formed in a pout, he sighs heavy enough that it ruffles Kacchan’s leaves.
“Sorry. I got carried away. What should I make? What do you think, Kacchan?”
(Kacchan shrugs at him again.)
It’s about half way through the boiling of army stew in a pot at his stove that a knock comes to his door. Thick, resonating, a few in quick succession. Startled and caught off guard, Izuku’s hand twitches behind him at the knot in the strings of his apron. When he fails to call out in time, the knocking starts again.
Nodding to Kacchan on the counter, he moves closer to the genkan, right where his intercom affixes to the wall and presses the button.
“Hello?”
More knocking. Izuku fiddles further with the intercom and turns the screen on: he’s met with a head of tousled white and red, a dress shirt, a pair of sweats with hands tucked into the pockets.
Shoto tilts his head.
“Izuku? Is that you? Are you home?”
Izuku turns back to his stove, then reaches over to twist the knob so it switches off.
Shoto, very patiently, courteously, waits until Izuku gestures for him to enter before stepping through, bowing his head. He slips his messenger bag off his shoulders, sets it right by the couch.
“Sorry for the intrusion.” He turns his head towards the stove. “Dinner?”
Izuku nods, then narrows his eyes at his friend.
“Are you, ah, here for anything special, Shoto-kun?”
He shakes his head. “No,” he says. He veers to one side and, past Izuku’s shoulder where he not-so-casually leans right up against a chair, he eyes the plant on the kitchen counter. “Not really, no. I’m dropping by. It’s been a while.”
“It has,” Izuku admits, sheepish. “Sorry about that, Shoto-kun.”
“It’s fine,” his friend assures him, quick, and turns back to the plant. “Huh. I thought you were done taking care of plants.”
Izuku perks up. “Oh!” he goes, spinning on his heels and walking over to Kacchan. “Yes, actually. I… was. Too many dead from stupid mistakes,” he says. “But— ah, Kacchan kind of changed that.”
Shoto blinks, then raises one eyebrow. Just one. Doesn’t narrow his eyes with the movement, though.
“Is that so? Bakugou helped?”
Izuku nods. “Yeah. Now I’m committed,” he says. “There’s no doubt. This one should live.”
(This one has to live, he tells himself, though the thought constantly itches that somewhere, somehow, he’s going to mess this up. Somewhere, somehow, he’s going to kill Kacchan.)
He lets the thought go, or tries to, a long sigh escaping from his lips.
“I hope it does, then, Izuku.” Shoto reaches out, his hand landing on Izuku’s left shoulder. He squeezes it once, pats it a few, and lets go.
Izuku shoots him a wobbly smile. “Would you like to stay to eat?” he asks. “There’s enough for two.”
It doesn’t take nearly as much convincing as he expects.
Shoto ends up eating two soup spoons’ worth of the stew from the tiniest bowl in his cabinet, keeping his gaze just slightly off-center, somewhere to Izuku’s right. When he’s done, he thanks him, pushes away from his chair, traces a finger gently over one of Kacchan’s leaves, wishes him luck with the plant.
(“I’ll try,” Izuku ends up replying. When Shoto gives him what he can only read as a look, he adds: “Seriously, I will.”
By the time he’s out of the apartment, Izuku’s shoulders are slumping with relief.)
𖥸
When night comes, and he realizes the sun’s dipped beneath the horizon, Izuku’s in a panic. Pacing his room, his hands placed tight atop his temples, he practically whimpers every time he passes by the pot on his kitchen countertop. Clad still in his work clothes, his tie now completely off instead of loose like how it was when Shoto was over, and the first few buttons of his dress shirt undone to expose collarbone and the peeks of his pectorals, he runs a hand through his hair, ruffling and messing it up; shifting it, pulling it this way and that. It sits a bird’s nest atop his head by the time he finally opens his mouth.
“Kacchan,” Izuku starts, “I— I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Kacchan sits, the few leaves at the very top of his plant form slightly drooped.
“I need to find a way to break into your apartment and look for your will,” he explains. “Because I think you’re gonna die overnight.”
Kacchan rustles.
“Well I don’t—” he exhales. “Look. How are you gonna get any light? My— My apartment gets so dark, and— and, well, the light from my desk lamp isn’t any good for you. What— What does Kacchan think I should do?”
To that, Kacchan only droops even more.
“Okay,” Izuku mutters. “Okay. You're right. I'm being dramatic. You're fine. One day shouldn't hurt. One day won't hurt at all. I'll find indoor plant lights for you in the morning, and until then I'll just have to…” His sentence patters off. “You know. I just don't—” Slowly he palms his face. “I need to sleep,” Izuku says, walking over to the sink, and pulling a cup out of the cabinet. “God, I really need to sleep. Like, real sleep. It’s so late, I’m surprised you haven’t fallen asleep yet.”
(For the third time Kacchan rustles. He can't see it, but he sure can hear it.)
“Naps, I don't— I don't think really count as sleep. I need to get a full eight hours. Hasn't happened in a while.”
Izuku turns his tap off, and sheepishly he laughs.
“I’ve been… busy, Kacchan, y’know?” he explains. “So much to do at work. My kids’ve been a handful. Sometimes it feels like… Like…”
(No. Izuku shakes his head, shakes the thought out and away. But out of the corner of his eye, Kacchan perks up.)
“Nothing.” He swallows dry, coughs, drains his cup, refills, drains it again. “It’s nothing. I should sleep. Maybe— Maybe you can sit on the window in my room overnight?” He scratches behind his ear. “I don't want Kacchan to be too lonely.”
Of course, Kacchan can’t really say much to that. Not much beside move his branches up, then down.
(Later, as he’s changing into his sleep clothes he can’t help but feel a little too seen—he deals with this by pulling the curtains close, blocking Kacchan’s line of sight, then tearing them back open when he’s done, apologizing quietly.
It takes a while until he’s asleep, as it does every night.
𖥸
In the morning his movements are automatic, a practiced and well-ingrained routine: 1) wake up at half past five; 2) take a sip from the water bottle by his bedside; 3) check his phone for any emails about work or texts from his friends and his therapist. Then, 4) do ten minutes of stretching, 5) sit and stare at the wall for a few as he rethinks every single life decision he’s ever made in your adult life; 6) try to recall his dream, take another sip of water, 7) reply to any straggling late-night messages, then, 8) take the first drag off his bed.
Izuku walks past his window, heading for his desk, where he grabs a stack of papers and a tin pencil case. Taking his phone out of the pocket of his shorts he checks the time, finds he has about an hour until he needs to leave for the bus. So he waits, warms up leftover stew from the night before, wonders why there’s a few brown spots at the bottom of his sink and a spatter of dark dust on a corner, and takes his phone out to bide his time as he eats.
Something’s weird, though. Kacchan’s contact finds itself right under Bakugou Mitsuki’s, where the beginnings of a well wishings can be seen in the little preview box. Confused, he clicks on the messages, then hovers his thumb in the top right corner, right the call button, and then—
Through the silence cuts the ruffling of leaves.
“Kacchan,” he whispers. And then, louder, as he whips his head around to his bedroom door: “Kacchan! Oh my god.”
Izuku runs over to his sink, fills up a cup of water, and runs back into his bedroom. There, he finds the plant on his windowsill basking in the rising morning sun, soaking up the rays. Every so often, Kacchan tries to stretch out, a single leaf reaching out before freezing in place, quivering instead. Izuku sticks a finger in the dirt, twirls it around, then tuts.
“You’re all dry again,” he says as he tips the cup over, trying to get every inch of dirt. “Did you end up sleeping last night?”
One leaf bobs up and down, then quivers again.
Izuku laughs. “Must have been scary for Kacchan sleeping like this, as a plant, huh?”
A different leaf nods again.
He hums. “You’ll have to tell me all about it when you get back to normal.” He purses his lips. “Are you going to be okay if I leave you here while I go to work?”
Kacchan seems to hesitate, before shrugging.
“You’re right. What if Kacchan needs food while I’m gone, and no one’s there to give it to you?” He leans back, checks his phone. “I still have forty minutes until I need to leave, but—” He presses fingers to his lips, pensive. “I could bring Kacchan with me to work. I could call a taxi so it’s less awkward than the train. What does Kacchan think?”
A different, third leaf nods again, before all of Kacchan’s branches droop just a little.
𖥸
The taxi driver who picks him up doesn’t really question why Retired Hero Deku is holding a Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight-themed pot with one, really happy plant in it—at least, he doesn’t ask why there’s a plant in his car, only asks to not let any soil spill onto the seats.
It’s fine enough. He doesn’t really want to be bothered anyway.
When he gets to the UA building he’s only fifteen minutes short of the start of homeroom, so he heads straight for the teacher’s office, holding the door open with his hip, Kacchan in hand.
Immediately his eyes zero in on the space in the very back—started by a professor in the business department last year as a way to keep the teacher’s office greener, the nook was practically full with plants of all shapes and sizes, save for a little spot just big enough for Kacchan.
“Morning everyone! Is there space by the window for another plant, by any chance?”
“Sure is!” confirms one of his colleagues. “Should be a spot right by the window over there!”
Izuku beams. “Thank you, Hirai!”
Someone else whoops. “Midoriya’s first addition to the hotel! I waited for this,” she adds, turning to the colleague sitting next to her. “Loving the pot you’ve put it in, by the way.”
“Thank you, Sawa!”
Hirai eyes Kacchan as Izuku swerves corners to get to the other end of the room. “You gonna introduce us to the little one?” he asks.
Izuku holds the pot up. “This is a neon prayer plant! I just got him yesterday. I don’t know what to name him yet, but—” (To this Kacchan rustles, right when Izuku leans down to set him on the laminated wood.) “Hm. But I’ll figure it out soon!” He adds: “He’ll be coming home with me, though. I’ll feel awful leaving him just about anywhere.”
To that, half of the room bursts into a spatter of affirmative mutters; that’s fair, some say, while others simply coo. One of them, whom Izuku remembers almost spilling mustard on during a potluck two years ago, says something around the lines of, Real hard to let ‘em go off on their own, isn’t it?
(Kacchan rustles again.)
Izuku does a final check of Kacchan’s water levels, sticking one finger in the dirt and swirling it around; satisfied, figuring his friend doesn’t really need another round until the afternoon, he pets one of Kacchan’s leaves, then goes back to his desk and settles down, logging into his monitor and recovering all of his saved documents.
Before he leaves for his first lecture, Hirai promises to water Kacchan if Izuku isn’t around when he dries up. Bowing so low his hair kisses the thin carpet over the floor, Izuku thanks him profusely, vowing to give this back in… some way or another.
(When he checks his phone again after the first class the first headline he sees when he accidentally swipes right on his homescreen goes as such:
Genius Agency announces week-long hiatus for G.E.M.G Dynamight: Serious Injury, or Slack-Off? Netizens weigh in on recent activity from infamous UA graduate
They can’t be serious, he thinks, rolling his eyes. Kaccchan’s been a model hero on their screens for four years, now, his track record a little jagged with incidents of foul language, but otherwise no history of fucking up in any way, shape, or form.
Izuku starts his next lecture with this in mind, bites at his fingernails as he watches students work like he’s trying to get rid of any previous line of thought, like it hides in the keratin.)
That afternoon as he slides back into his seat in the office, he sits for a while. Contemplates. Watches as Kacchan, set right by his feet, angled perfectly in view of the window, soaks up the rays of the sun, drinks them in, branches drooping pleasantly, like these are Kacchan’s muscles going loose, untense, relaxing, kicking back, laying back.
He can’t really help but smile at the image. Can’t really help but feel endeared, kind of wish he was able to see human Kacchan do something like this—relax, that is, let himself be vulnerable.
He leans down and strokes one of Kacchan’s leaves, smiles even wider when Kacchan bristles, then relaxes into the touch.
𖥸
The next three days, too, end up being routine, though to them he adds a little twist: at seven sharp, he wakes, sits up, stretches, yawns, yells, checks his phone, tries to remember his dreams—fails at that, because not once has he been able to see a clear enough image—then, grabs his water bottle and takes a sip, and gets off the bed. When he makes it to the other end of his room, he stops in front of Kacchan, and reaches a hand out to gently pet his leaves.
Today like yesterday, he asks under his breath if Kacchan’s awake yet, if he startled him; and when a minute or so passes and he sees the first rustle, Izuku pours the rest of his room temperature water into Kacchan’s soil, turns off the LED still alight and pointed towards his leaves, takes a duster to the pot and swipes around until Kacchan’s temporary abode is spotless. Today like yesterday, when he walks over to the kitchen around twenty past, it’s with Kacchan tucked under his arm, his other hand holding his toothbrush as he spits remnants of paste and foam into his sink. Kacchan bristles unpleasantly, as if disgusted, as if this is new, and Izuku laughs, setting him onto the counter so he can go back into his room and change.
“I’ll be right back,” he promises before ducking back into his bedroom and pulling out his phone.
As he peruses his closet for the dress shirt that feels the most right he also peruses his messages, scrolls down the group chat with all his former peers and all of the messages about their lives—the meetings, the patrols, the days off, the dates.
(Not many of them know of Kacchan’s… predicament. Shoto, he learned, figured out parts of it himself and had it confirmed just two days ago when he came to Izuku’s apartment and plainly asked if Kacchan had been hit by a quirk of sorts, if he was in this very apartment. Izuku had to sheepishly admit the truth, then, taking Kacchan away from his spot on the bedroom vanity and bringing him into the kitchen, where Shoto proceeded to talk to the comically inanimate Plantcchan about gossip from their apartment building, all while Izuku made lunch and laughed along.
Another person who was in the know was, sort of strangely, Monoma—when visiting UA for a personal favour he owed Vlad King, he ran into Izuku in the teacher’s lounge and very plainly asked:
“How’s Bakugou holding up as a plant? Is he talking any?”
Izuku nearly dropped his papers, then, his face a bright red, eyes wide like dinner plates. He babbled until Monoma dropped his deadpan expression and started laughing.
“Don’t shit your pants, Midoriya. I was at the Genius Office just the other day. Asked Jeanist where Bakugou was, and he gave me the rundown. I was worried for the guy.” After a bit, Monoma added: “I’m just, uh, glad he’s being taken care of.”
And wasn’t that still a little strange, to be hearing coming from him of all people in their cohort.)
When he’s done, buttoning the top of his off-white dress shirt with knobby, clumsy hands and his blazer thrown over his shoulder, he walks back into the kitchen and finds Kacchan, unsurprisingly, still sitting there. Besides his leaves being a little more perky, less droopy than ten minutes ago, Kacchan hasn’t really moved.
“You okay, Kacchan?” Izuku asks, tilting his head.
One of Kacchan’s leaves nods. He rustles.
“Would you, um— Would you be okay with staying home today, Kacchan?” Izuku opens his fridge, takes out his bag of bread. “I’ve got this… meeting, and— and I dunno if I’ll get home before the sun goes down.”
Kacchan hesitates a little before shrugging.
“I can leave you under the LED all day but—” Izuku tuts. “I don’t know if it’s all that good for you, to be under it so long, y’know? Whaddya think?”
Kacchan bristles.
Izuku makes a sound like a lilted hum in the back of his throat.
“What, Kacchan doesn’t like it?”
His leaves bristle again; Izuku laughs at that, a little soft, pushing the lever down on the toaster, then leaning back to cross his arms.
“That’ll be a bit,” he mumbles under his breath. And then, glancing behind him to Kacchan: “Huh. Is it too much? Like— Like too… bright? Would you be okay with an hour or two in the dark, then?”
Kacchan nods, his leftmost leaf all stark contrasts of greens bobbing up, then down.
Frowning, Izuku brings his fingers to his mouth, pensive. It would be worrisome, he thinks, to leave Kacchan at home—this entire week they hadn’t really been apart save for times when they were one, maybe two rooms distanced—but there wasn’t much of a choice to be had for either of them.
“Okay,” Izuku breathes, shoulders jolting when his toast pops out, “I’ll put Kacchan by the big window, then. Yeah. Yeah, better do that.”
In his pocket his phone vibrates; quick, Izuku spreads the margarine on the knife over the surface of the toast, stuffs it into his mouth, picks Kacchan up with his fingers curled under the base of the pot, and walks over to his balcony.
“Gotta go,” he mutters. “‘M sorry, Kacchan.”
𖥸
When the call comes in, Izuku is about thirty percent sure it’s a joke.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Am I speaking to Midoriya Izuku?”
(He recognizes this voice: last time he’d called they’d redirected him to a quirk analysis laboratory at a hospital in the Minato Ward, where doctors and scientists were working with detectives in investigating the plant quirk case. There, he spoke for about ten minutes with a quirk scientist named Yanagida who explained that they were still figuring things out with the man in custody, trying to make a list of all his victims before they took on the question of his quirk.
Izuku thinks, perhaps pessimistically in the back of his mind for a split second, that maybe this is another let down.)
Izuku sits up so straight his bones practically crack.
“I am!”
Yanagida makes a sound of confusion. “Sorry?”
“I mean—” Izuku huffs, laughing awkwardly into the mic. “You— You are. I am— I’m Midoriya. Izuku. I am.”
She hums on the other end.
“Good. I’ve got news about the man we have in custody—we’ve been able to coax some more out of him regarding the quirk.”
Izuku swallows. “Is it—?”
“Nothing serious. The previous information stands, Midoriya, I assure you. Dynamight will be back to his regular self in two days time. By any case, Uenaka—” She clears her throat. “Ah, the suspect in custody, that is—provided us a bit of valuable information, and I’ve been advised to update you on what we know.
“Uenaka does not have a choice over what plant a victim ends up as,” Yanagida tells him. “Rather, his quirks turns people into the plant symbolic of their most prominent personality trait or greatest desire. It isn’t so simple, though—lots of plants have different meanings for different circumstances. He says, ah, that those who live lives full of greed and who tend to focus on self-sustenance, or for whom aggression is a natural state sometimes end up as venus flytraps, but that the same can happen to someone who persists, who strives for greatness and who focuses on passion. We went in to do a few tests, and confirmed all of this,” she adds. “If I may ask, Midoriya—do you know what kind of plant Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight is?”
For a moment Izuku racks his brain. He thinks back to his conversation with Tsubaki Kondo over the phone, and wetting his lips he feels the name inch forward to the very rip of his tongue, and—
“A prayer plant,” Izuku says. “Ka— Dynamight is a, uhm, a neon prayer plant. I think— I think the scientific name was… uhm— mara… maran—?”
There comes the sound of Yanagida tapping at a keyboard, then another hum.
“I’ve got it, here, thank you,” she says. “I’ll pass this on to our botanist—it’ll help keep the investigation going on our end. That should be all, Midoriya. Have a good day.”
“You t—!”
(The sound of a call going dead. Izuku sits back, wearing his bottom lip between his teeth.)
With just over thirty minutes left to his lunch break, he reaches into his bag, pulls out his laptop, and opens a new tab in his search browser. The first thing he does is search up prayer plant, click on the images, scroll down until he finds the clearest image of a neon prayer plant with the leaves drooping in the exact way Kacchan’s always did, at the most subtle of angles—under it, the attached article reads:
How to Take Care of Your Prayer Plant: Maranta leuconeura species, watering, sunlight [...]
Izuku clicks on the image without a second breath, scrolling past the weird nondescript ads and the title; and in the first paragraph, his eyes skim past irrelevancy after irrelevancy, things he already knew about the best ways to take care of prayer plants, take care of Kacchan in this state.
So he clicks out. Goes instead to the general search page and tries again, adds on the word ‘symbolism’. It doesn’t take long before he finds an article that describes, among others, that prayer plants can sometimes mean or be associated to—
“Devotion?” Izuku mutters under his breath. “Gratitude? Focus?”
What could Kacchan be this devoted to, so far as to become it?
𖥸
He drops his bag down by the couch as he enters his apartment later that evening, a slump to his shoulders and a twitch to his right eye.
(Izuku’s head swims with pieces and parts of a schedule, changes made to notions in the Hero Basics curriculum that, frankly, didn’t even concern him. He was a history teacher, for fuck’s sake, had been so for only about two years—as interesting as it all was there was very little reason for him to be sitting there, at the leftmost corner of the table in the conference room listening to lecture upon lecture about the tiny things to change about the system of work studies when he was so, so tired.
Everytime he leaned back to cross his arms and sink further, lower into his office chair, he felt more of the urge to sleep overcome him—but Aizawa sat next to him would tap his shoulder two quick times and jolt Izuku awake, point towards the projected image of Snipe’s slideshow and mutter to him something about how large the guy’s text body was, how unconventional it was for a presentation on something so serious. Izuku would laugh, rub his eyes, and sit up straighter.
It helped, but still he came home with a pressure cooker in his frontal lobe, a throbbing between his eyebrows. He needed to rest.
It was Friday; he needed a drink.)
“Kacchan?”
Walking up to his balcony window with a can of beer in one hand Izuku leans down and squats, petting along one of Kacchan’s leaves. He smiles when Kacchan flutters, then droops slow and low, and—wow, Izuku thinks, the association with the picture from earlier that afternoon was spot on.
“You okay?” he asks. “Sorry I was gone so long. I’m back now, ‘least.” He stands back up, sets his can on the TV shelf, then goes back down to pick Kacchan up and tuck him under his left arm. “Time to water you.”
𖥸
He switches on the lights for the kitchen counter.
“You’ve been like this almost a week, haven’t you?” he mumbles when he settles into a seat, warmed-up leftovers of takeout soybean paste noodles in a Mt. Lady ceramic bowl set in front of him. He takes a swig from his (second now, because he downed the first one as he was preparing his dinner) can, and knocks it gently against one of Kacchan’s leaves. “Bet Kacchan misses this, yeah? Cold beers on Friday nights, and all. Shame I can't exactly bring Kacchan into a bar like usual.”
He giggles as Kacchan shivers from the frigid of the can and the condensation on it; he sighs as he sets the can down and shoves his face into his hands. Groans, as his face grows warm and his senses more heady.
“Can I say something?”
Kacchan doesn't move.
“I was gonna ask Kacchan to hang out this weekend, y’know. Since it’s almost your birthday. I was—” He hiccups and burps. “I was gonna do this whole thing. Make a reservation somewhere nice, ‘cause I noticed Kacchan hadn’t— hadn’t, well, done anything nice for himself in so long. And it’d just be the two of us.”
Kacchan doesn’t move. For a few minutes in the kitchen it’s silent.
“It was gonna be…” Izuku takes a forkful of his noodles, and swallows his bite. “A date. But, um, I was gonna let Kacchan… y’know figure that out on his own.” He stops. “Or— Or maybe I would have psyched myself up and asked you out pretty straightforwardly. Hopefully you’d say yes. And when we got back here I was going to ask if you wanted to stay—but I know you’d offer it before I could. You’re faster at those kinds of things.”
He hears faintly the sound of Kacchan rustling again, but softer, less curt and quick and rough.
Izuku takes another swig, grimacing when the beer hits the back of his tongue.
“Are you sleeping?” he asks. “It is pretty late.”
Kacchan doesn’t move.
Quiet, a little meek, dragging the ends of his words, Izuku asks:
“Kacchan. Would you have wanted to stay?”
𖥸
Izuku awakes with his head pounding, throbbing. There's the sound of schoolchildren outside his window walking, talking, waiting for the bus; the sound of cars revving in their parking spots; scooters swerving, maneuvering. Groaning, Izuku turns over onto his back and studies the ceiling. After a minute or two, he sits up, itching along the side of the neck—and the first thing he notices is that there’s no plant on the vanity.
Yelping, he gets off of the bed and scans the room; Kacchan isn’t by the windowsill, not by the floor. He isn’t where the nightstand is, and peeking into the kitchen from his bedroom door he doesn’t see the black-and-orange pot on the granite counter, either.
He runs into the living room. By the patio door is just an empty pot—orange intersecting lines a little coated in grime but otherwise still perfectly intact; but nowhere, absolutely nowhere, is…
“Kacchan!” Izuku calls, breathing now erratic, unrhythmic. “Fuck— No, no, no— Kacch—”
Could he have been kidnapped, burglarized in the night? Did Izuku have to fish through his other belongings, his drawers, now? Could someone have come in and uprooted him? Maybe Kacchan is somewhere out there, in a pot unfamiliar to his own, or worse, drying out in a paper towel, dying—
Behind him comes the quiet sound of a hum, then the rustling of fabric against fabric.
On the tips of his toes Izuku walks over to the taller side of the couch and peeks over the edge; sighs in a mixture of relief and shock when there, curled into himself in fetal position, blond tufts of hair fluttering with every exhale out of his nose, is Kacchan. Fully human, fully solid Kacchan.
He rounds the couch, pushes the table back and kneels in front of Kacchan, hands splayed out trembling, wanting, needing to touch. There’s sweat slowly building on his forehead, soaking into his bangs, and a smear of dirt on his left cheek; and with every tiny breath his eyelids flutter.
Izuku breathes out. He slumps forward, arms draping over his friend’s sleeping figure.
He stays unmoving there for not much above a minute before he feels Kacchan stirring under him. Pulling back, Izuku chews on his nail, watches as Kacchan slowly awakes.
He pries one eye open, seems to register that Izuku’s there.
Kacchan wets his lips and coughs. “Looks like you’re finally awake.” Sitting up, his movements a little jerky, he grumbles: “Forgot how much you fuckin’ sleep when you drink. Waited so fucking long I ended up taking a nap.”
Izuku exhales shakily, and surges forward to wrap his arms around Kacchan, squeeze him.
“You’re back,” he strains, voice a little wet.
Kacchan hums, and gives the hug back with both arms.
“‘M back.”
“You’re back. Should I— call someone? I should let— let the people at the lab know you’re back, and Shoto, too— ack!”
“You can do that later, Izuku, for fuck’s sake. Don’t move. It’s messing up my—” He coughs.
His breath does this weird sort of hitch when Izuku pulls away.
“Are you sick?”
He kisses his teeth and shakes his head. “Don’t mind that. Still gettin’ used to breathing like normal.”
Izuku freezes. “What? You weren’t— Kacchan wasn’t—?”
He shakes his head, places two fingers to his jugular as Izuku sets a hand on his forehead.
“Was absorbing air through my leaves,” he says, and as he does neither of them really register that Kacchan’s leaning into the touch, that their noses are so close it wouldn’t take a lot for them to meet. He pouts. “Didn’t have to… breathe the way people do.” He swats the hand away. “‘M not feverish.”
Izuku laughs.
“Sounds scary.”
“It was,” Kacchan whines. “This ever happens again I’m sacrificing you so you can know what it feels like to be… stuck like that.”
“Hey!”
(Izuku asks if he’s hungry, and grumbling, Kacchan admits that, while the sunlight and water was food enough when he was a plant, there isn’t anything he wants more than something to actually chew. So, Izuku gets up, walks across the hallway into the kitchen and starts trying to make a hangover soup.)
“Izuku?”
Izuku pushes a cabinet shut and glances behind him as Kacchan huffs, then leans enough to the side that he can see him pouting.
“Mmyeah? D’you need anything, Kacchan? Water?”
Kacchan shakes his head.
“I’m fine. Just wanted to—” He mutters something half-angrily under his breath.
“Kacchan?”
“I’d have asked to stay,” he mumbles, “Just for the record.”