Cliffside

Ch. 3

tw for sexual assault / abuse!

i wanted to expand on the warning; it's already happened, but it will be a topic that is heavily discussed, described, and explored in this fic.

also remember the cw for this story: there will be multiple triggering topics. it is literally a story about mental health. please stay safe!!

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Izuku.

Izuku hates touch.

He hates the feeling of fingers in his hair, of hands on his shoulders, waist, of palms against his thighs, his wrists- the feeling of a hand in his. It's deceiving. It's enticing. A disguise.

Izuku often wonders why so many people even want to touch him in the first place. Why they love him.

He wonders how his friends haven't seen through him- how they haven't realized that he's been deceiving them for as long as he's known them. There's nothing they should love about him, reasonably. He's disgusting, ruined- and it's irritating that so many people want to be involved with him, be around him, be a part of something so gross.

Izuku Midoriya is something so sickening and loathly that he doesn't even feel like him anymore- he doesn't want to be him anymore. He doesn't want to be Izuku- he wishes he were separate from that identity, far, far away, because Izuku Midoriya is repulsive and disgusting and unlovable.

Except he isn't- is something he's been trying to tell himself recently.

Realistically; The way a person thinks is learned.

Yagi's told him that multiple times. A thought process that's been conditioned so deep, a thinking pattern that's been so normalized, is extremely hard to cut through. And to make it easier, he has to work on cutting through it every day- which is something... Something he can't do.

Yagi tells him it gets a little easier every day, but the hard part is doing it every day. That's what it is for him. On and off and on and off.

He starts, he's doing well, he's heading in the right direction, he's succeeding- and then he suddenly can't do it anymore. He falls, he sinks fast, hits the bottom hard, stays there for a while- and then he starts again. Rinse, repeat.

The cycle is maddening and exhausting and makes him want to tear at his skin with his tender and chewed to skin nails because when is it supposed to get better? Where is the 'better' that people keep telling him is coming?

Does it ever get better? Can it get better? Does he even deserve better?

He comes to the conclusion that he doesn't, and he sinks.

And he isn't sure how or why, but for some reason, he's always being pulled back to the surface. Life never completely lets him drown and he isn't thankful for it at all. He's angry.

Regardless, Izuku looks down when his phone buzzes and he stares at the text from Y/n until his screen turns black. He would like to say he relates to Y/n, he'd like to say that she gets him because they seem similar, and all his friends seem to think so, too- but he doesn't relate to her at all. She doesn't get him at all; he can tell.

Izuku feels sad and angry, constantly. He feels those things strongly; In an infuriatingly overwhelming, nauseating sense. He's fighting the battle and being forced to pick himself up because he has no other choice- but Y/n?