Need You (ShinDeku)

Ch. 122 - Shine

A/N: woah, there's a poll function now. What are people using it for? What types of polls would you guys want to participate in? I suppose it would be effective to use for a story where the readers chose what happens next but otherwise... it seems like a pretty random feature? Is it just there as a tool for writers to get more interaction with their work? I am so intrigued lol.
Have fun reading!

Shinso POV

"What?" Okay maybe I'm a little breathless and out of sorts since he's on top of me, holding my face, but that answer doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

"Uh- it feels a lot better, like it's supposed to feel." This time he gives an answer that makes sense, and pulls both his hands away. "There's more... feeling."

I bite back a laugh. "How much of it?" I ask, and now his hands are resting on my shoulders and he leans back a little. It's really not much better of a position.

"What?" It's his turn to ask, and he almost seems a little distracted. I can't blame him, his hand seems to be slowly healing itself in a way that scientifically shouldn't be possible.

"How much feeling?"

"Oh. Like half." He lifts it up to do his best to curl it into a fist and then flex it, and then he looks at me, laughing a little.

"It's gonna be all better, just like you said. I'm- I'm gonna... I really can still be a hero, can't I?"

"Of course. Izuku, you could've made it even if you were missing a hand. Sometimes I wonder if you have too little confidence in your abilities," I tell him.

"I..." his face gets a little pink as he looks down at me. "I think I have a reasonable amount of confidence. Even before everything, I was just a student. Really nothing special, and not even top of my class." His hands curled against my shoulders as he tucked his fingers in.

"Do you know how cool you were in the sports festival? Did you know that first years in other classes talked about how good you and Uraraka were at hand-to-hand? The business and gen ed students started betting pools on which hero students would do best in the rankings when they debuted and you were regularly at the top. The support students like to gossip about a rumor that you'd break your bones when you used your quirk because it required so much effort to reign in your power that if you didn't destroy your body to interrupt the flow you would blow entire skyscrapers away with the flick of your wrist."

"Okay well that one's ridiculous, my body was just too weak to handle it, and it pertains to the quirk that I don't have anymore, so it's not really a relevant rebuttal."

"My point is that you should absolutely have more confidence in yourself. You shine so bright that students were genuinely convinced that you had impossible abilities, when like you said you weren't even ranked top of the class. People look at you and they just know. It's like; wow, this guy is unstoppable. So maybe you can't blow a building away with a flick of the wrist and maybe you never could but it was easy to recognize that you are someone who is going to go places and do things. For people like that, crazy rumors are inevitable."

"That's uh- I don't know that I shine," he mumbled, because of course that's the part of my speech that he latched onto.

"You absolutely do," I tell him, and when he leans back I follow him, sitting up. "I'm saying you catch people's attention and they're so impressed they start thinking you must be magic. Some people, it's like they're born to be heroes. You're one of them, without a doubt."

He looks at me for a long moment. "Even if I'm going underground?" He asks quietly.

"Some of the most heroic heroes in the world are underground. I think it fits you surprisingly well, don't you think?"