healing takes time (none of it is linear)

Chapter 5

A month into living with Eijiro, Katsuki, and Shoto, Izuku may or may not be having a mental war with himself. On the one hand, he felt he could trust the three alphas he was now living with, and there came ease. They were all kind... well, Katsuki wasn't exactly kind, but he wasn't like the other alphas he met. But, on the other hand, he felt he could trust the three alphas he now lived with and knew something horrible would come from it. He thought something terrible would happen.

"Izuku, you ok?" Eijiro asked, careful not to startle the omega too much.

Izuku still jumped but forced a smile, "fine- I'm fine-" he stammered. He was fine. Or as fine as he could. "Totally fine."

Katsuki raised an eyebrow, "you've been muttering to yourself and biting your thumb for the past 40 minutes." He wanted to add "idiot" to the end, but Eijiro would hit him upside the head later for that if he did.

Shoto took Izuku's hand away from his mouth so he'd stop chewing on his fingers. "Do you want to talk about it?" He asked softly.

Izuku stared at where Shoto held his hand, and maybe his brain short-circuited momentarily. He still couldn't understand why they were so soft on him. Any other alphas would have yelled at him for mumbling to himself. He wanted to apologize, but his talk with Katsuki the other night made him bite his tongue. "O-oh um- no- no, I'm fine-" he pulled his hand away, trying to ignore how his cheeks heated up.

Katsuki rolled his eyes but said nothing about it.

"Ok," Eijiro said, "if you want to talk about it, we're here to listen." He patted Izuku's head a few times and smiled at him. "So don't hesitate."

Izuku was going to hesitate. He was going to hesitate so much. How would he even talk to them about it? Like- oh yeah, my trauma is so deep that I can't trust anyone, especially alpha's- which you three are -and when I get close to trusting someone because they're nice to me and seem ok, their personality always flips 180, and they abuse me so much that I can't bring myself to believe that hey maybe there are good people in the world and maybe you guys are good and won't abuse me or make me basically their slave for the rest of my life even though Denki said you guys were ok, but hey I have trust issues even with other omegas so- yeah... no offence to Eijiro, Katsuki and Shoto, but he wasn't going to do that.

"Can I go to my room?" Izuku muttered, looking down because he didn't want to be around people.

"Yeah, you don't need to ask, ok?" Eijiro reassured.

Izuku just nodded and got up, heading for the stares.

When he got upstairs, Eijiro sighed, leaning back into the couch and covering his face. "Fuck did we do something wrong?" he muttered into his hands. Whenever he thinks they're progressing, Izuku seems to backtrack and put up his walls again. He didn't blame Izuku for this, of course not, he had been through so much that it only made sense that he had difficulty trusting, but he couldn't help but feel like he had done something wrong.

Recovery wasn't a straight path; there would be ups and downs, which was expected.

"I don't think so," Shoto told him.

"He's just thinking too hard," Katsuki said, slumping in the seat beside Eijiro.

"I think that's what I'm worried about," the redhead admitted. Getting lost in thought with no one to pull you out could be extremely dangerous, especially when you had the self-esteem and past Izuku had.

"He'll be ok. Just give him a minute," Shoto told him.

Eijiro wanted to go and cuddle Izuku to make him feel better. His alpha begged and pleaded to make sure the omega was ok. But he wouldn't let himself give in. It could backtrack progress more if he did; that was the last thing he wanted.