Chapter Text
Sometimes Izuku takes a look around his life now and thinks, ‘How did I get here?’
The answer isn’t overly complicated. He’d been a struggling college student and his apartment had flooded.
He’d been sleep deprived and anxious and so fucking desperate not to have to go back home like the failure he’d always been that when he’d heard about an availability in another building he’d jumped, no questions asked.
Those questions should have been asked.
He has no excuses for failing to read the fine print on the lease agreement but here he is now, over a year in and still paying dearly for it.
Just not with money.
There’d been a clause, you see about missing rent by even a day and it had stipulated that simply paying late would not be enough. The renter would owe “one favor” or the “monetary equivalent thereof” for every day a payment was late. Which would have been fine if the favors mentioned were just yard work or chores or upkeep duties around the property. And if the agreement hadn’t tied Izuku to the apartment for a minimum of five years. And if the owner wasn’t allowed to randomly raise the rent every couple of months.
They’d gotten him good and there was no way out but forward.
The boss had started him off ‘slow’ with pickpocketing— threatening to break Izuku’s fingers if he didn’t put them to work settling the debt— and Izuku had worked the streets in his rapidly dwindling spare time till he’d gotten so good at it he could tell at a glance which passersby could spare the wallet or change and which would be going hungry if he took so much as a single yen.
He didn’t know whether to be proud or horrified at the accomplishment.
***
Time passes and still Izuku takes just enough to fill his daily quota and no more, slipping the rest of his take into the pockets of those who look like they need it more.
He knows his fellow workers aren’t as scrupulous about it— knows they line their own pockets with the extras or set it aside for their next month’s rent— knows most of them keep at it longer than they strictly have to to work off their debt.
But Midoriya Izuku had been forced into this in every sense of the word and he refuses to embrace the lifestyle as they have. One day his contract will expire and Izuku will be ready. He’ll be packed up and ready to move out with the fervent hopes that the boss doesn’t manage to murder him before he can anonymously tip off the police about what’s been going on in this building.
Till then he does what he must and no more, treading the line between not compromising on his morals while still doing what they tell him to lest they go after his mother as they’d threatened to at the start.
It feels selfish to do nothing about it in the interim, but Izuku has kept his eyes on heroics long enough to know how it goes. If he incriminates himself at all then somehow he’ll find himself solely pinned with the blame.
That’s just how it goes for quirkless criminals.
They’re called too stupid for anything but a life of crime, and yet somehow everyone is quick to believe they were also the ones in charge.
No.
Izuku needs to be on a plane to America by the time the story breaks and he needs to be free from his contract when he leaves or it could impact his fresh start.
(Sometimes Izuku wonders if he’s actually that optimistic about his future or if he’s just in denial. The odds of him living that long and actually making it out alive are… Well, Izuku has done the math before. He doesn’t need to do it again.)
For now though… for now he’s stuck tight.
And it’s only getting worse.
Izuku had always been small and plain looking and therefore easily overlooked, but once the boss found out how smart he really was it was all over.
Now he’s an official member of Stomp Four-ce, a four member team the boss handpicked to specialize in bigger heists and Izuku has never been less grateful to have been granted a seat at a table, (and a better apartment on the ground floor.)
Izuku himself doesn’t do much of the heavy lifting, thankfully. He mostly has to stay in the van with the blueprints and floor plans, coordinating the members and keeping the car running. And helping to plan the actual heists of course.
It’s not at all what he wants to be doing, but all he can really do at this point is keep his head down and his gloves on and try to keep things as peaceful as possible without leaving any incriminating evidence behind that will tie him to the crimes.
He knows the big boss is always sure to keep any and all evidence tucked away for rainy days to ‘ensure loyalty’ but Izuku is hopeful that anything the boss could possibly have on “Gopher” is too circumstantial to hold up in court.
There’s no way to know for sure though.
***
The days continue to drag on, each bleeding into the next and Izuku trudges through them trying his best to enjoy the bits of friendships he’s managed to forge with Whiplash and Mirror as he counts down the years and days and hours and minutes till he’ll finally be free.
And life would have continued dragging and bleeding together in much the same vein had Izuku not recognized Rook the moment he walked in to answer their boss’s call for a temporary fifth.
***
It’s been four years since the single instance Izuku had first glimpsed him– four long, brutal years– and Izuku would not have remembered him at all, much less been able to recognize him on sight, if not for one thing.
Kacchan.
Well, more specifically that Izuku had been hit hard by his UA rejection letter, followed of course by his frankly terrible start to the high school he did get accepted to, and he’d only agreed to watch the UA sports festival at all because it was a yearly tradition at that point and he hadn't wanted to upset his mom.
And then.
Everything had changed.
The screen had filled with a blond boy laughing maniacally in only a slightly quieter manner than Kacchan himself and Izuku had been unable to look away.
The footage hadn’t shown what the boy had been saying— hadn’t even been overly focused on that one battle in the corner at all considering what was going on in the center with the team carrying the million points.
But Izuku had started watching with eyes peeled for Kacchan’s team and hadn’t been able to stop himself from tracking the manic boy around the arena— desperately hoping against hope that someone would finally manage to knock his old friend down a peg.
And then.
Someone had.
The blond boy with the blue eyes and the twisted smile had copied Kacchan’s quirk with a laugh and then used it on Kacchan himself before snatching the headband right off his head.
And Midoriya Izuku had sat there on his couch, stunned and almost completely overwhelmed by the feelings that had rushed through him at that simple interaction.
For the first time in a long time Izuku had felt able to breathe.
Kacchan wasn’t all powerful.
Kacchan wasn’t perfect.
He wasn’t even the best.
And Izuku could finally be free of him.
He’d cried when Kacchan had knocked the boy down and taken not only his own headband back but the rest of the headbands too.
It just hadn’t seemed fair that Kacchan should win and this boy should lose when he’d given Izuku so much just by punching Kacchan in the face.
And then had come the worst realization of all.
The boy hadn’t placed.
He hadn’t made it to the one-on-ones and subsequently had never been individually introduced by Present Mic.
Izuku hadn’t even been able to learn his name.
He’d waited a full year to catch a glimpse of the boy at the next festival and hopefully, finally, learn it.
But the boy hadn’t been there.
Not then and not the next year either and Izuku has long wondered what had ever happened to him.
But now here he is!
Strolling into the hideout on the ground floor of the apartment complex with that same manic smile that Izuku hasn’t seen in four years.
And Izuku has one moment to think that the boy must have been expelled from UA— must have gone through similar hells as Izuku himself to find himself betraying his hero dream to become what is essentially a villain.
But then the boy is introduced as quirkless and all the pieces finally click together.
The boy did go on to become a hero.
Just not a spotlight one.
He had obviously been tapped in his first year to go underground and that’s why he wasn’t at either of the later sports festivals.
He is a hero that is undercover and has probably infiltrated the group to finally take them down.
Izuku can only feel relief that it will all be over soon.
“Call me King,“ the secretly-a-hero smirks at his first introduction, offering his hand to their leader for a shake.
“No,” Stomper sneers and Izuku can tell he’s tightening his grip on the handshake to be as threatening as possible. “The quirkless don’t deserve a title like that. You need something more… appropriate. ” He grins then and it’s ugly and menacing. “We’ll call you Servant instead.”
“Ha,” King/Servant/Manic-UA-Student laughs. “Touche, I’ll settle for Rook then.”
“No can do, Servant. Quirkless nobodies that dare to overstep ought to be taught their place.”
“Oh hey, Gopher over there is quirkless too!” Whiplash grins, shoving between the two of them like she can’t feel the tension in the air and steering Rook over to Izuku as if that fact alone is supposed to make them besties now.
Stomper grumbles about having two weak-asses on the team now before tugging his coat on forcefully and storming out.
Mirror immediately hops off the table with a grace Izuku knows is hard won from years of training and follows after him.
Izuku pushes down his feelings and pastes a wide smile on his face as he gives a jaunty wave with a hand that only shakes a little. “Welcome to the group, Rook. I might be the physically weakest member but I’m still the info guy so feel free to ask me anything. ”
Whiplash steps away after clapping Izuku on the back hard enough that he sees stars and Izuku only hesitates for a second before tacking on a slightly desperate, “Guys like us should stick together, right?”
Rook smirks and cocks a hip and his eyes don’t leave Izuku’s as he says, “I might just take you up on that.”
Whiplash lets out a squeal like she thinks they’re flirting and maybe Rook is but Izuku definitely isn’t, though he doesn’t bother to correct her.
He meant what he said.
He’s going to give Rook whatever the hero needs to shut the boss and this scam house down even if it sends Izuku straight to hell with the rest of them.
It’s the least he can do for his hero.